Grassland Budgeting for 2012 Growing Season:- Bollin Farmers

Tuesday 08 May 2012

Howard Hughes led the March meeting on preparing a Grass Budget for the 2012 season. The aims of the meeting were to identify the following:-

Grass Production
Grass Utilisation

The overall objective is to achieve a minimum grass utilisation of 7.5 tonne of Dry Matter / hectare with a target utilisation of 10.0 tonne of Dry Matter per hectare. On a milk production unit a utilisation of 7,500kg Dry Matter would provide maintenance, growth and 5,000 litres / hectare. Therefore if you could successfully attain a utilisation of 10.0 tonne of Dry Matter / hectare then there would be a further production of 5,000 litres / ha (All from Grass).

To prepare the budget you need:-

The proposed stocking density
The amount of Nitrogen to be used
The amount of supporting concentrates to be fed
The amount of milk production intended

It should be appreciated there is an inter-relationship between all of the above factors. To attain the budget figures you would be looking at the following:-

A stocking density of 2.40 livestock units / ha
To apply 310kg of Nitrogen / hectare
To provide 1,600 kg / live stock units of Concentrate
Milk Production / Live stock unit of 3,000 litres will be obtained from forage. This will give 7,200 litres per hectare from forage, utilising 7,500 kg of Dry Matter.

As you now have the budget for the season a monitoring system is required to assess whether the budget figures are being attained:-

Measure the grass cover for the farm – weekly

Apply 1.75kg N / day to all grazed grass

Monitor grass production weekly

Provide optimum grazing – 2,800 kg / hectare of grass cover at all times

To silage only “spare” grass. Once you have more than 2,800 kg of cover across the whole farm, take out 30% of the farm.

If you follow all the above rules then optimum grass growth and grass utilisation should be achieved.

H C Hughes