Future Beef farm walk: How to save money on your farm this spring

A number of options available to beef farmers to save money on their farms this spring were discussed at the recent Teagasc Future Beef farm walk on John Barry’s farm, Nenagh, Co. Tipperary.

John, a participant in the programme, working closely with his local advisor Michael Daly and Future Beef Programme advisor Aisling Molloy, commenced his grazing year on January 15^th, when autumn-born calves were given access to paddocks close to the yard. Store cattle were moved to grass after grazing a forage crop over the winter months on February 5^th, with numbers being added to this group on a weekly basis depending on how John was progressing through his Spring Rotation Planner.

Farming 70ha of grassland, John aims to have 42.2ha grazed by mid-March, which falls in line with his weekly target of grazing approximately 5.68ha/week. Achieving this target is helped somewhat by excellent grazing infrastructure on the farm – consisting of 41 paddocks and a farm roadway – which enables excellent grassland management for his split spring and autumn calving system, consisting of 50 spring-calving cows and 35 autumn-calving cows.

Benefits of early grazing

Michael Daly, a Teagasc drystock advisor based in Nenagh, discussed the benefits that early grazing can bring to a beef farm, adding: “From a cost point of view, the whole secret is to get cattle out as early as you can when the weather allows. For every day extra you get cattle out, it is worth €2.50/LU/day in the spring; that’s the financial benefit.

“Unfortunately in beef, it’s very hard to visualise that on a day-to-day basis. A dairy farmer can look at their bulk tank, beef farmers have to look at the kilograms of weight gained and money saved.

“The €2.50/LU/day comes from a €1.50/day saving in the cost of feeding them inside and the rest is from the extra efficiency through additional weight gain achieved outside. The whole secret is to get as much of the farm grazed as early as you can. It is not a sin if you have to bring cattle back in. With outblocks, a lot of people leave turnout as late as possible, but at that stage you are losing weight gain, efficiency and it’s costing you money,” he explained.

The primary aim when grazing early in the spring, Michael explained, is set up the farm for the second rotation in mid-April; the Spring Rotation Planner is a tool to enable this to happen.

“There are two things you are trying to do this time of year. The first is from a cost point of view. By getting cattle out early, they get acclimatised to grass and begin to thrive. You are obviously trying to save costs, but more importantly you are trying to set the farm up from the middle of April onwards,” he said.

Grazing on John’s farm

To have an adequate supply of grass this spring, John Barry, the host farmer for the event, began closing his farming in late October, with these paddocks having the highest covers at the start of the 2023 grazing year.

Grazing started on January 15^th, with autumn-born calves. Store cattle were moved to grass on February 5^th. As part of John’s Spring Rotation Plan, he aimed to have the first third of the farm grazed by March 1^st – which he achieved - two-thirds grazed by March 17^th, with the final third grazed by early to mid-April, before commencing his second rotation.

Some of the grazing paddocks were targeted first, before moving onto silage ground, and then the first rotation will end on the remaining grazing paddocks that have yet to be grazed.

By doing this, John is allowing the first grazed paddocks the longest available opportunity to have a sufficient cover of grass when the second rotation begins in mid-April. If all grazing paddocks were grazed initially, it would mean that he would be moving to the silage ground too late, thus delaying the silage cutting date and having a negative effect on silage quality. If the silage ground had of been grazed first, the grazing paddocks would have insufficient time to recover for the start of the second rotation, leaving John in a position where grass supplies would run tight at a time of year when he’s preparing cows for breeding and expecting his non-breeding animals to be gaining in excess of 1kg/head/day from grazed grass.

Slurry

At the time of the farm walk, John had yet to apply any artificial fertiliser, but was instead opting to use slurry – applied using low-emissions slurry spreading (LESS) technology – as his nitrogen source after each paddock was grazed.

Matthew Ryan, a Teagasc advisor based in Thurles, advised farmers not to underestimate the value of slurry on their farms this spring, with 1,000 gallons of cattle slurry worth the equivalent of €50 when compared to the cost of artificial or compound fertilisers. This comes as 1,000 gallons is the equivalent of spreading a compound consisting of 9 units of nitrogen (N), 5 units of phosphorous (P) and 32 units of potassium (K).

With the economic value of slurry being so high this year, he advised those in attendance to apply it to where the highest requirement for compounds occur - silage ground. This is as its nutrient make-up is similar to the requirements of a growing silage crop and minimal topping up with artificial fertilisers is required to make up the balance of P and K.

The benefits of using LESS technology on beef farms, in terms of the nitrogen levels retained to grow the grass plant, were also discussed. On this he said: “If slurry was to be applied using a splash plate, 6 units of nitrogen would be available to the grass plant. That increases to 11 units for every 1,000 gallons when we move to the trailing shoe, as the slurry is placed closer to the ground and the risk of losing nitrogen to the atmosphere is reduced.”

Matthew also noted that the use of LESS has been made compulsory on farms with a grassland stocking rate of >150kg N/ha (organic nitrogen/ha) from January 2023, with those stocked above 130kg/ha of N required to use this technology from January 2024 onwards.

Fertiliser

With fertiliser prices continuing to remain strong in early 2023, farmers need to make the best use of the nutrients within their farm gate. However, Aisling Molloy explained how making a simple switch in nitrogen fertiliser type can bring financial and environmental benefits this spring.

She explained: “One of the options we are looking at is the type of fertiliser being used this spring, particularly the nitrogen source. The different options for straight nitrogen are urea, protected urea and CAN. From an environmental point of view, protected urea is the best out of the three. When we looked at the costs back in January - urea at €950/t, protected urea at €1,000/t and CAN at €850/t - there is a difference in the cost per unit of nitrogen because of the different rates of nitrogen in each one.

“Urea is working out the cheapest. But if we were to work that out in terms of effective nitrogen – without the losses – protected urea is actually working out the cheapest per kilogram of grass grown and is actually the best from an environmental point of view this spring.”

Table 1: Nitrogen fertiliser costs (January 2023)*

*Cost may vary depending on fertiliser purchase price.

For fertiliser applications, Aisling recommended using the 4 Rs – right rate, right time, right place and right product. For the first round, she advised using a max of 20 units/ac of nitrogen, applied only when soil temperatures exceed 6 degrees, ground conditions are good and no rain is forecast for 48 hours post application. In terms of the right place, she suggested farmers assess which fields typically give the best response to early nitrogen, with these generally being fields with good soil fertility, recently reseeded swards and ‘warm’ soil types. Her final point was on the right product, with protected urea being the preferred option for the first round, as it is best from an economical and environmental point of view.

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