Reasonably warm but wet weather has resulted in good pasture growth but poor milk production on the Stratford Demonstration Farm and the district in general over the past four weeks.
September rainfall for Stratford was around average levels in total but there were a high number of rain days while temperatures have been above average.
The warm conditions along with nitrogen fertiliser use resulted in good September growth of 58 kg DM/ha/day and October so far has been average at around 64 kg DM/ha/day.
However the regular rain and low sunshine hours has resulted in very wet soils and low dry matter pasture.
This has made it very difficult to use pastures well and to graze them to target residuals for good pasture quality control plus there is ongoing pugging damage by the milkers.
Current pasture covers on the farm are quite good at around 2300 kg DM/ha and 14 per cent of the farm has been missed out as surplus pasture for silage.
With the good pasture growth from mid September nitrogen fertiliser applications were stopped and PKE feeding reduced substantially.
At the end of September the farm was split into two equal farmlets and two equal herds and a repeat of last season's milkers supplement trial was started.
The control all grass herd has continued on grass only feeding aiming to feed the cows well while grazing to target residuals to maintain good pasture quality.
The supplement herd is aiming to have the same pasture feeding level and residuals as the control but have PKE fed over and above this.
This is so far working to plan except are having trouble grazing to target residuals with both herds in the very wet conditions.
Current pasture intakes are around 16 kg DM/cow/day and the supplement herd is getting 2 kg PKE/cow/day.
Milk production in mid October was 1.57 kg milksolids/cow/day and 5 kg ms/ha/day for the all grass herd and 1.72 kg ms/cow and 5.5 kg ms/ha from the supplement herd. Both are around 11 per cent behind last season on a daily basis.
This difference generally reflects the wet conditions and low dry matter pasture along with lighter cow condition.
Unfortunately on current weather projections for the rest of October the there is little improvement in sight.
For the next month planned management on the farm is to continue on around a 20-odd day round with silage paddocks out, harvest the silage to get paddocks back into the round by mid-late November, try and graze pastures out to keep good pasture quality and get the cows in calf.
Mating starts on October 21 with non cycler treatment being done at the start of mating.
Spring fertiliser will be applied when dry enough to get trucks around the farm and this will included 60 kg/ha of urea.