Coping with the consequences of heavy rainfall

Dairy farmer John McNamara joins Emma-Louise Coffey to discuss the challenges of the recent heavy rainfall on his farm.

John explains that there has been almost 200mm of rain on his farm during the month of February which has made it near impossible to graze.

While John generally hits 30-40% grazed during the month of February, he has grazed less than 10% this year.

John targets to get cows out twice daily after each milking with evening grazing from 4-7 pm and removing cows once they have finished grazing to reduce poaching damage.

The advice from the Grass 10 team is to readjust your spring rotation planner; graze 1/3 by St Patricks Day, 1/3 by the 1st of April and the remaining 1/3 by mid-April.

For more information:

https://www.teagasc.ie/media/website/publications/2020/Dairy-February-2020-web.pdf

For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:
https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/