To produce high-quality milk and keep its dairy cows healthy, Maesllwch Home Farm in the Wye Valley needs to grow plenty of good grass.
Achieving that comes from measuring yields weekly to monitor sward performance.
“Grass is a key driver of profit in our business,” says Andrew Giles, who produces milk from a herd of 550 New Zealand Friesian cows.
Weekly grass measuring is a job that must be done “without fail’’.
For the last three years, Andrew has been sharing his grass growth data through the Farming Connect Welsh Pasture Project.
Gathering this data helps him to plan for pinch points in the growing season, and to manage those at the earliest opportunity.
Maesllwch Home Farm is a very dry farm with a rainfall average of around 860mm (34 inches) a year.
But with excellent grass management from Andrew and his team, the farm can grow an average of 13tDM/ha a year.
When growth falls below the average for what Andrew would expect at a specific time of year, one of the first changes he makes is to extend the length of the grazing round.
If the weather forecast points to a dry spell, concentrate feeding is initially increased and silage might be fed in the paddock too, on top of a fresh grazing break to adjust grass demand.
All paddocks are then brought into the rotation and silage cutting delayed. “If you can see a grass shortage coming, by measuring and having that data you can manage the situation,’’ says Andrew.
Taking action with this combination of steps is important because it can make a big difference to the effect drought has on grass availability and milk yield.
Andrew’s herd produces an annual average milk yield of 5,850 litres/cow of milk sold, 510kg/cow milk solids, a concentrate input of just 800kg/cow, with that milk supplied to Arla.
Grass measuring is done every Monday by herd manager John Thomas, who inputs the data into Agri-net to provide an accurate picture of grass covers and growth.
The data is discussed at a team meeting between Andrew and John, farm manager, Tom Williams, and assistant herd manager, Luke Evans.
Decision making is based on this data to ensure that the herd is presented with high quality grass every day of the grazing season.
Average farm cover through the main growing season is, at 2300kgDM/ha, slightly higher that the level most dairy grazing systems would aim for but this policy helps the loam soils at Maesllwch to retain moisture.
The first paddocks earmarked for grazing in the spring have opening covers of 3500kgDM/ha.
“High covers will over-winter well provided you have good cleanout in the autumn, we then have fresh, green swards, not dead material,’’ says Andrew.
He aims for relatively high closing covers of 2350-2400kgDM/ha because, as well as being dry, the farm experiences cold winter conditions.
A new earth-banked lagoon with capacity to hold 7,000 cubic metres of slurry is enabling the farm to make better use of its home-produced nutrients, with an ambition to reduce the fertiliser rate to 150kg/ha/year from 190kg.
The herd calves over 11 weeks from the first week in February. Compact calving is a high priority for the business – in spring 2023 87.5% of the herd calved in the first six weeks. In the 2023 breeding season, a submission rate of 97% was achieved and a six week in-calf rate of 83%.
Turnout to grazing by day comes once 30 animals have calved.
Each 3-6ha paddock averages 10-11 grazings a year; the farm mostly hits ‘magic day’ in the first week of April.
Measuring also helps Andrew to identify the worst-performing fields and to take necessary action, either rejuvenating leys or acting on soil sampling results to rectify any shortfalls.
Ten percent of the farm is reseeded annually with a shift in emphasis to autumn reseeds after a succession of dry springs; around 70% of reseeds are now undertaken in the autumn and 30% in the spring.
Customised seed mixes that have been proven during grazing trial work are used.
Andrew became a Welsh Pasture Project monitor farmer because he understands the value in sharing information and ideas.
“There are many farmers, myself included, who have been measuring and monitoring grass for a good number of years. If we can encourage others to do that through the Welsh Pasture Project and to utilise that information then this project has been successful,’’ he says.