Low dry matter content of northern dairy pastures

Abstract

Pasture of low dry matter content (DM%) can occur in northern New Zealand. From 17 years of monthly pasture sampling on one farm at Kerikeri the DM% in regrowth was equal to or below 13% in more than half the samplings from April to June for ryegrass and ryegrass-kikuyu pastures. The DM% of pasture samples collected just before grazing were below that of regrowth samples (from cages) from April to September, but were higher than these from October to March. Keywords: pasture dry matter content, DM%,Northland, ryegrass, kikuyu grass, clover, plantain