Tom O’Connell, dairy farmer in Inniscarra, near Cork city, and John Maher of Grass10, join Stuart Childs to discuss the importance and management of reseeding.
John first outlines the national figures which are poor in terms of the amount of reseeding taking place each year and this is a negative for the industry.
Tom is the opposite, reseeding every year on both grazing platform and silage ground. Reseeding every year is what Tom says allow him to have the confidence to take out the ground safe knowing he has responsive swards that will grow at sufficient levels to meet herd requirements while he waits for the reseed to slot back in, as evidenced by the performance of the spring 2024 and 2025 reseeds.
Tom splits the 10% so that it isn’t all gone out together and generally takes the 2nd piece out when he knows the first bit is nearly ready to come back in. This as an insurance policy against having too high a stocking rate with all ground out at the same time.
Tom has also reduced his overall milking platform stocking rate through land acquisition and a slight reduction in cow numbers so that now his stocking rate with reseeded ground out is where his stocking rate was before he took out ground for reseeding in the past.
This is making the whole thing easier to tackle as at the higher stocking rate, he could be tight for grass at times and this was adding cost as well as compromising production.
For Tom, reseeding is an essential element of each year’s work.
John finishes up by highlighting that people often do a lot of the things right but fail to get the post emergence spraying and early grazing of the sward right. Tom is doing this very well as evidenced by his lack of need to spray for weeds between reseeding events in his paddocks.
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Canada - english