PASTURE CONTROL

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 968, 10 May 1930, Page 31

PASTURE CONTROL

ENGLISH EXPERIMENTS VALUE OF SHORT FEED The modern system of pasture management under which the grass is kept short either by grazing or by cutting all through the year has received wide attention and there are many proofs obtainable now in favour ot the fact that short grass is much more nutritious than long grass run up to seed or flower or even run. up more than four or five inches high. H. G. Sanders, of the School ot Agriculture, Cambridge, shows by experiments in England how the yield of dairy cows falls off when fed on long grass. He says the best measure of the value of grass as food, for comparative purposes, is undoubtedly the rate at which the milk wield falls off, for the actual yield is largely determined by the conditions during the earlier stages of the lactation. The writer has studied this question at some length in about 4,000 lactation records of Norfolk cows, and found the average drop in yield, per week, to be as follows: April, 0.451 b; May, 1.231 b; June, 7.561 b; July, 6.351 b; August, 4.771 b; September, 6.121 b; October, 5.171 b; while it varied between 2.71 b and 3.71 b for the other months of the year. This is in complete agreement with the statement that has been made

by Mr. Boutflour to the effect that, speaking generally, the summer management of our dairy herds is markedly inferior to their winter management. It will probably be agreed that the above figures might quite well be taken as definite measures of the state of maturity of average pastures throughout, the season. In April the grass is in a very young and'nutritious state, so that cows in milk do not continue their normal falling off of yield with progress of the lactation but remain practically constant, while in May the majority of the grasses are still young, and we see that the drop in yield is well below the average (about one-third of it). WASTE FEED IN SUMMER In June the story is very different; the mean rate of fall is uearly Sib a week (just twice the average for the whole year), and there can be little doubt that this is caused by the fact that during May the grass has “got away” from the herd, and is now approaching a mature form. July is, normally, the wettest month of the year, and thus considerable growth is made( i.e., there is a greater proportion of young grass eaten) and this is shown in a reduced fall .in yield, although the full effects are not seen until the next month, August. In September growth slows up again and consequently the cows are eating more mature herbage, which has a further detrimental effect on their yields. There can be no doubt that a much greater efficiency would be obtained if grasses were managed so that cows were always eating short herbage right through the summer. It is not desired to minimise the difficulties of estimating the stocking required to achieve this desirable states of affairs, with an unknown rainfall to be considered. but even if it means the use of the mower now and then, it would probably be well worth while.