Explosive demand for ‘easy care’ grass varieties

IN the past, grass varieties have been picked for high digestibility to drive animal performance and high dry matter production to be able to carry high stocking rates. However, as all farmer wish to get more from their swards with less labour, there is increasing demand for varieties that are most suited to grazing. Varieties that can be cleaned out easily and do not require the extra time or cost of topping and continue to drive animal performance at each grazing. This is essential in Ireland where most of our grass is grazed by animals. This differs dramatically from other European countries where silage cutting is much more important.

Irish farms need varieties that don’t require mechanical intervention, varieties that are grazed more often, creating more milk and meat and ultimately leave more money in the farmer’s pocket

Unfortunately to date this kind of grazing information is not included in the Pasture Profit Index (PPI). The PPI is only derived from cutting trials conducted by the Department of agriculture so no animal effects are currently factored into the PPI.

New grazing trials

Grazing information is now streaming from the Teagasc On-farm grass variety evaluation study. In this experiment, varieties are being sown on commercial farmers across the country and subjected to all the rigours of actual grazing pressure that swards experience on normal Irish farms. What’s more, we then get a measure of a varieties performance with regard to yield and digestibility under grazing, number of grazing along with post grazing sward height. Results

When it comes to easy care varieties AstonEnergy comes to the top of the pile. AstonEnergy was grazed the lowest of all the varieties tested, meaning more of the grown grass was turned into meat or milk and they sward can regrow from a clean starting point without topping.

AstonEnergy also achieves the most grazings, along with one of the best results for Digestibility, spring growth and total growth over the 4 year period, 2013 to 2016 on Irish farms. While AstonEnergy looks good on the PPI, where AstonEnergy it really excels is under actual animal grazing.

What kind of mixture?

AstonEnergy is an essential component of any grazing mixture sown this Autumn. To

The pasture profit Index presents very useful variety information from cutting trail conducted by the Department of Agriculture, grazing information is not recorded.