Which paddock[s] should I renew?

Date: 2011-01-10 | Category: Dairy

Start with your poorest performing ones.

The best paddock[s] to renew are, obviously, the poorest producers. These have the potential for greatest improvement.

The trick is to know which ones these are.

DairyNZ analysis has shown that on dairy farms the difference between the best paddocks and the worst ones is commonly 100% - or in other words the former are producing twice as much dry matter as the latter.

Or, to put it another way, if the best paddock is producing 20 t DM/ha, the poorest is producing only 10 t DM/ha.

On dairy farms and sheep farms where the difference between paddocks is great, visual observation is usually a sufficiently accurate gauge to determine the most suitable paddocks for renewal.

In intensive situations, however, it’s not so simple, unless detailed grazing records are kept or some other objective measure of pasture growth, a platemeter for example, is used. If a farmer can establish which paddocks yielded the least grazings during a season, this will indicate which one[s] should be renewed.

High-performing farmers guided by such objective means are known to have renewed paddocks that would not have been their first choice on the basis of eye assessment.

It is important to establish accurately which paddocks are performing most poorly, because if they are successfully renewed, the return on the renewal investment is the greatest.

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