There’s no way a fine autumn will ever make up for the lost growth in 2018, but it sure helped. Growth rates of 50kg DM/ha in September gave me a farm cover of 565kg as I started the last round on 3 October.

I followed the autumn grazing planner to get 60% grazed by the end of October. Milkers were housed on 19 October and the dry cows on 25 October. So how have I ended up with a closing cover of 243kg? My initial reaction was how the #%$@ did that happen?

The answer comes from heavy September covers and exceptional grazing conditions. Yet another twist in this wet/dry/hot/cold/stormy year.

In mid-September my farm cover was 849kg despite two fields out for reseeding and a highest paddock cover of 2,000kg. I brought home the lighter weanlings to stretch the outfarm grass and help deal with my very flat wedge. This is my first year out of winter milk so all cows were still grazing. Last year I continued grazing the spring milkers until mid-December by feeding silage at milking time. This November I had extra travelling and meetings so I kept it simple with grass and 4.5kg of coarse mix. Once I dried off a bunch of cows, I did a leader-follower system to clean off the butt. And clean it off they did! My closing cover has lots of zeros and 25s recorded.

Positives

To employ a well-used phrase, we are where we are. Let’s look at the positives – a top cover of 850kg on 25 November has a conservative potential to grow 700kg by 1 February giving 1,550kg for the early calvers.

At the other end of the scale, there won’t be much growth on a cover starting at zero. This will, however, be perfect to take a boost of slurry as soon as ground conditions allow from 13 January. In a normal year there would be a few hectares not properly grazed out due to wet conditions.

There might be grass to measure on them, but it would be questionable quality and from experience needs to be grazed before it responds properly in spring.

Housing started six weeks later and grazing finished a month quicker. I hope next spring will be as easy.