25 March 2022

The Clover Reporter with William Dennehy

This week's Clover Reporter from the Grass10 newsletter is William Dennehy of Currow, Castleisland, Co. Kerry. William is hosting a clover walk on his farm on April 5th. Get his top tip for clover here along with details of clover varieties sown on the farm

Name: William Dennehy
Location: Currow, Castleisland, Co. Kerry
Soil Type: Medium Soils in a High rainfall area
% Farm in Clover: 36% (11.89 Ha)
% from Reseeding: 33% (3.9Ha)
% from Oversowing: 67% (7.99Ha)
Clover content 2021: 17%
Clover Varieties: Buddy (medium Leaf Size), Chieftain (medium Leaf Size) and Coolfin (Small Leaf size)
Seeding Rate/ac: 5 Kg/ac on oversown swards, and 2 Kg/Ac on full reseed
Methods used: Oversown - Einbock air-seeder, and Full Reseed - one pass
Why Clover? I’m trying to reduce the chemical N use on farm, we started from an environmental point of view buts it’s now on a price issue as well.
1^St rotation Management: I’m just on 50% of the farm grazed and all the clover ground has been grazed, I had very strong overwinter growth and the opening cover here was over 1100Kg’s of DM/Ha, the Clover covers were a little higher than I would have liked but I’ll try to graze these at 1200 covers in the next rotation to keep light down to the base. The first two weeks of March were difficult grazing conditions here, but I got through this with on/off grazing and good infrastructure.
William’s Top Tip for Clover: In a high rainfall area multiple access points to paddocks have helped to prevent damage to these clover paddocks in a difficult early March. Also the PH and P and K indexes must be right to help the clover to establish. Topping up the K before the end of the grazing season has really helped the clover here. The farm is walked here every 5 days in main season and decisions made using Pasturebase.

William is hosting a clover walk on his farm on April 5th for more info go to www.teagasc.ie/cloverwalks

Find out more from Teagasc here about Clover

See the latest grass10 newsletter at: Grass10 Newsletter - 22nd March 2022