Winter PASTURE

40+ tips to get you through The days are much shorter this season, restricting time for jobs after work, but it’s an important time to make plans for spring.

THE HARDEST job in winter is building up enough feed for spring. It means controlling grazing without letting heavy stock pug wet soils, and then feeding silage and hay without wasting it to keep stock thriving and hopefully maintaining or gaining weight.

You see too many farms where stock keep eating what keeps growing, so the farm is always like an over-mown lawn made up mainly of flat weeds. That means there’s no decent pasture growth ready for lactating stock in spring, and expecting them to milk off supplements doesn’t work. The best feed for milk production is high quality leafy pasture long enough for stock to graze.

It’s a great relief to see paddocks greening up again, but don’t assume this is all good news. You need to know what is growing, which means learning to recognise grasses (especially ryegrass) in the leafy stage, and the army of weeds racing ahead of it.

Californian thistles are a major enemy and cooler winter soil temperatures never seem to halt their growth. They need to be attacked regularly in the young leafy growing stage and not when seeding. Regular mowing helps to weaken their roots, but there’s a specific strategy to efficiently do the job – google ‘BHU californian thistle’ to find an excellent article with all the ways to organically control it, including the right mowing techniques and timing.

A lot of weeds are spread in hay bales, so keep an eye on any nasties you may find, especially if you have brought bales onto your farm. The plants may look dry and dead, but their seeds will be viable. Docks, thistles and ragwort should be easiest to recognise.

Only feed enough hay that stock can clean up in about an hour to avoid them using it as a dry bed in a wet paddock. There’s a crude rule that what feed stock can clean up in an hour will provide maintenance, but it’s more important to keep a close eye on their body condition, which must be appropriate for stock approaching birth in a few months’

time. Learn how to condition score stock accurately – check my blog on how to do this: http://woolshed1.blogspot. co.nz/2009/01/sheep-farm-husbandryhow-to-condition.html

Think of what grows on paddocks in terms of Dry Matter (DM), which is the feed less its water content. Then think what stock need each day for ‘maintenance’ of their body weight and function (‘production’). Winter pastures only produce around 15kg Dm/ha/day and a single large cow will need at least 14kg DM each day to maintain her and gain body condition coming up to calving. A single ewe needs about 1kg Dm/day for maintenance.

This is the basis of a feed budget, to make sure the feed on the farm will meet the needs of the stock until the critical date arrives in spring when the pasture growth exceeds the stock’s feed demand which may vary from year to year. Talk to someone who does regular feed budgets in your area if you need help.

Then there’s nitrogen fertiliser (mainly urea), which is used far too often as a panic action to grow some grass in a feed crisis. It won’t work if other things like warm soils (above 6°C) are not right, and other soil nutrients are not optimal. Only apply in light dressings of around 25kg/ ha at any one time and avoid drains and creeks, and don’t apply when the soil is waterlogged.

Good growing conditions will give a 10:1 response or better, which is 10kg of pasture DM for every 1kg of N in the fertiliser applied. This could happen in a couple of weeks or less, but if it’s cold and miserable it may take three weeks or more, the response could be lower, and the N could be leached before the plant roots take it up.

Pugging is the major sin as there’s no point in seeing highly nutritious feed being pushed down into the soil by cattle. Pugging wet soils does serious damage to the delicate crumb structure of the soil so air can’t circulate as it becomes waterlogged and the crumbs are smeared, banishing earthworms. It can take years for the soil to come back to life again.

If you are serious about soil care, build a feed pad for cattle from bark, which as a bonus makes good compost by the following season. Standing cattle off pasture in a race or on concrete for long periods is not acceptable on welfare grounds. If you have to move cattle in the wet, move them across ungrazed areas as they will do less damage.

Do not graze the roadside as there are now so many issues with serious legal consequences to be aware of if stock or fencing cause accidents.