As we commence this grazing season we come into unfamiliar territory of being able to turn the cows out to grass from the 3rd Feb! “Yes” I hear you say all spring calvers turn out there cows in February. But the reality of being able to turn your cows out on the 3rd February and then graze for am/pm without bringing them in at night by the 12th of February is not common place.

Only once previously about 5 years ago did we achieve this and we on/off grazed later in that month. Simply Wow!! Enjoy it!!

When turning the cows out we have to setup our Spring rotation planner, the “Srp” is the blue print to get us to the second round on time and making sure we have enough grass available for the second round.

You populate it with your relevant farm information and the “Srp” will give you a set area to graze on a daily basis. We have some simple targets 30% grazed by end February / 66% grazed by 16th March / then the second round starts 5th/8th April (for us). Magic day comes at 8th/10th April, this quiet simply were the grass grows quicker than the demand of the herd on a daily basis.

Every week we platemeter the farm and all the data is inputted into Agrinet, then we will see if we need to increase or decrease the area we’re grazing to achieve the weekly % grazed targets, if we want to decrease the area we have to graze higher covers of grass and vice versa graze lower covers if we want to increase the area. The key is to achieve very good residuals which we target 1500 kgdm/ha left on the paddock when the exit the set area.

With a very good farm average grass cover of 2300 we have unbelievably been able to turn a number of dry cows and Youngstock out on the 14th February, which is unheard of.

As we head into the weekend of 23rd February (2018 the weekend of The Beast from the East) we have reports of temps hitting 18 degrees! #dustingofftheshorts

We have applied a application of Dap across the whole farm on the 15th February which will help get things going, but the key thing is to get this grass grazed off.

We have done alot of farm improvements over the winter, new cubicles, new calving yard which have really made things more efficient. We have also installed calving cameras that are a great investment!!

So let’s enjoy the smaller work load than normal for this time of year with less tractor work and focus on the cows and the grass. The positivity is up and we will be enjoying the end of the month soon, we will hope for a great March but most importantly we will keep having fun!!