ZERO grazing

Tomjim

I am leasing land to a dairy farmer.

He is going to reseed etc, however I suspect that he will want to take 3 cuts of silage plus zero graze it, is zero grazing hard on land?

dmakc

P's and K's will naturally take a hit but if he's progressive (and funding a reseed might suggest he is) he might be maintaining their values.

Suppose it depends what you went for in leasing's fine of income versus comfort. When I pulled out of a bidding process one time the owner came looking for me to match the winning bid as they were worried about giving it to the other person. The time to ask was 70euro/acre less before it got down to just the two of us.

Edit - from reading your other thread all seems to be agreed and signed - so what are you hoping to do if it was hard on the land?

Tomjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120245097#Comment_120245097

It's not signed off yet and I could if I wanted stipulate 2 cuts in the lease if I wished, but I'm not sure if I want to go that road

minerleague

You could look for soil sampling to be done at start and end of lease and come to an arrangement with tenant to replenish P and K to value you're both happy with

mahoney_j

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120245118#Comment_120245118

A good way is to soil test before he dose anything and at end of lease indexes and lime requirement need to be close to or better than at start ….3 silage cuts and a z grazing pulls off a lot of nutrients

Bass Reeves

If he is watching to take off that amount and quality of feed off it he will need to keep fertility up on it. The risk would be he would skimp the last year, however lads like this often do not. He will probably want to lease it again so he will probably keep it right

He could leases it put cattle on it and similarly dog it. Lads have to accept that if lads is making decent rent there is risk attached.

Soil test and add it to the agreement

K.G.

I suppose define what is meant by "hard on ground".zero grazing is no different to grazing apart from 2 things,compaction and recycling the slurry.in an irish context zero is a spring/autumn thing and it is often done in poor conditions which is where the compaction issues arises.but that is relatively temperary and in most cases a ploughing for reseeding will sort that and anyway the farmer will quickly see reduced productivity if it goes on.the recycling of slurry is the bigger issue and would have more longer term consequences running down humus and fertility levels. Id be warey of letting to a client that is a distance away and does alot of umbibical spreading at home.we find here that we wouldnt have a massive amount to spread at home as we never cut without spreading on the land away from the home and with the advent of the dribble bar we use the dairy washings to make the slurry more suitable for spreading which we used to spread around the yard.there is a frame of mind now with some farmers that you are better off taking high qaulity dry silage instead of zeroring with the view that are you better off feeding dry good silage rather than a load of sopping grass.also if you are using a contractor it can be hard to manage feeding you cows depending on the load of zeros arrivall