April 2010 edition
Monthly Reminders – April
Pastures
- With the cooler temperatures and welcome rains in March, perennial ryegrass plants which may have been dormant over the warmer summer months will begin to grow again. This can be the most important time of the year to ensure these pastures are managed correctly to ensure they remain highly productive throughout the year.
- A grazing rotation of 25-35 days will ensure plants have grown to their potential and created energy stores to generate new leaf once the plant has been grazed.
- Allowing perennial ryegrass plants to be grazed below five centimetres will severely reduce their ability to produce large leaves, and high yields in subsequent grazing.
- If you require assistance to ensure the most appropriate rotation lengths and residuals are met on your own farm then a Feeding Pastures For Profit program is definitely for you. The program provides the principles, tools and discussion that allow all farmers to control the balance between profit, lifestyle and risk for their farm resources.
Establishing and managing new pastures
- Try to get pasture seed in the soil before the end of April.
- Grazing with stock can be undertaken when new pasture does not pull out of the ground when pulled up by hand. Do the ‘pluck test’, ie when leaves tear off rather than roots coming out of the ground.
- Ideally, the ryegrass seedlings should have three emerged leaves prior to the first grazing and ensure that stock do not overgraze.
- Graze if canopy closure is beginning to occur, ie no bare ground can be seen when looking from above.
- Avoid overgrazing; leave at 4 to 6 cm residual.
Cows
- If autumn calving, prepare for the start of mating by ensuring all equipment is ready. Decide which heat detection methods to use and train and allocate jobs to staff.
- Make sure you have the necessary bull power!
- If running autumn and spring calving cows in the same herd, tail painting spring calving cows with a different coloured paint may help by showing which cows do not need to be checked.
- If possible maintain the current cows’ diet by continuing to use supplementary feeds until all pastures have reached the targeted leaf stage. To implement a long rotatation for building pasture cover may mean feeding the herd with a small portion of their diet in pasture and the remainder as fodder crop, palm kernel extract, silage, hay, pellets or grain.
Young stock
- Feed quality supplements to dairy heifers. Advice from InCalf suggests that heavier, well-framed heifers get in calf easier, produce more milk in their lifetime, need less help at calving and cope better with herd competition.
Water Issues
- Clean out your effluent pond to create maximum storage capacity for the coming season’s rainfall.
- Irrigate if necessary and remember the value of late irrigation.
- Make a note in your diary of irrigation trouble spots that need maintenance. Farm channel maintenance, irrigation stop maintenance and pump maintenance need to be planned ready for the next irrigation season.
- Start planning for any dam construction you plan to do over winter.
- The Dairy Shed Water License Transition Program amnesty has been EXTENDED and now ends on April 26, 2010. Therefore, if you need to apply for or update dairy shed water licenses, contact Goulburn-Murray Water.
