Outdoor Lambing Pasture Cover

[$Sheep]

With outdoor lambing having started or about to – What is your pasture cover / height now?

For ease of comparison between farms measure it using a ruler and record using centimeters (cm), take an A4 or larger size magazine or similar and place it on the grass and measure the height of the magazine from the ground, the compressed grass height will give a good average measure of all grass tillers.

Is the pasture height at your target?

Measure the grass again every second week, it will be interesting to observe the change.

For those who record lamb liveweight the connection between pasture height and liveweight gain will again also be of interest.

I look forward to learning how you are all getting along.

 

[Tim W]

As usual pasture cover varies across my farms--
1) New ley sown in September 2013---green but no real 'cover' as such. This will have sheep turned onto it for lambing in 10 days time but at a low stocking rate---3/acre. It will look poor for about 2 weeks and then bloom
2) established leys now have 4 cm of thick lush grass/clover on and will have ewes turned on to lamb in 10 days at 8/acre---once lambed they will probably have an alternate grazing plan, moving every 2 weeks or so
3) Land at 800ft, exposed has a bit of green showing in an old native grass ley---ewes are going on here in the next few days at 3.5/acre
4) New farm---wet clay ground with lots of weeds and couch grass. Will be rotationally grazed (hard) and over seeded as and when conditions are suitable

I find it is hard to get growth to coincide with lambing but by the last week in April there will be adequate grass to support good lamb growth

The only sheep I slightly wonder about are the terminals who are on old downland at 750 ft and no discernible grass growth yet. They have started to bag up and I have managed to keep them at about 2.5 BS to avoid lambing difficulties ---but will they cope as well as the maternals? Probably not ----