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Irish Examiner

Dermot's planning ahead to make best use of nutrient applications

Things are going well at the moment. Silage is cut. We are in week five of breeding. There are a few repeats, but there is nothing too concerning. One cow has not gone through bulling yet, she has been treated twice by a vet, so I have made the decision to get rid of this cow. We had to feed silage for a week. They were eating about 3kg/DM per day of silage at milking time. This allowed me to hold the rotation. We took out this silage from their diet on June 1. The silage we fed was bales that we had baled earlier in the year. I walked the farm on June 4. My farm cover is 689kg DM/ha. Cover per LU is at 159kg/DM. I have a good few paddocks of similar covers of about 1,000-1,200, which I hope to graze soon. This is why I am not too worried about being tight on grass. These few paddocks are after grass from fields that were cut for bales earlier in the year. I am keeping the cows on 4kg of ration in the parlour for now to try and stretch the grass for a few days. Hopefully, if growth picks up a bit, I might be able to drop the ration to 3kg. I am following the cows with about 20-22 units of 38% nitrogen and 7% sulphur. I am hoping to use around a unit a day. We cut our first-cut silage on May 21. We cut 21 acres of silage. I can graze my whole farm, which meant I grazed my silage ground back in the spring. I closed my silage ground around the first week of April. We got slurry put out on all the silage ground last week. It got around 2,500 gallons to the acre with the trailing shoe. Any of the silage ground that was cut for first-cut and will be cut again for second-cut will get a bag and a half of 38% nitrogen and 7% sulphur (NBPT-protected urea and Sulphur). I will wait about 10 days after spreading slurry before I will spread the fertiliser. I hope to spread the fertiliser this coming weekend if weather conditions are suitable. This would mean I will have around 75-80 units of nitrogen for my second cut silage For the fields that were cut already and will not be cut again, they also received 2,500 gallons of slurry. These fields will get about three-quarters of a bag of 38% nitrogen and 7% sulphur (NBPT-protected urea and sulphur). I reseeded a few paddocks on May 13. In the next week or so, I hope to top dress them with around 30 units of chemical nitrogen. I set one paddock with an intensive grazing mix from Barryroe Co-op. The other paddocks have been reseeded with red clover silage mix. I will spray Clovermax on my reseeds to protect the clover. Dermot and Linda Walsh are farming in Lislevane, Bandon, with their children Tadgh, Aoife, Maebh, and Eoin. They milk 84 cows and supply Barryroe Co-op. Read More Dry spring delivers quality silage but slows grass growth in Youghal