Ground conditions are getting soft this week on the farm, with cows now making a mess at paddock entries and around water drinkers. Growth is continuing much better than expected with rain and heat doing the job.

I have second-cut silage in the pit and can now bring in more area for grazing, which will take the pressure off the grazing block if growth slows down as expected over the next three weeks.

Silage area received 30 units this week plus slurry with 10 to 15 acres of the silage area pulled back into the grazing area, depending on the growth in this period.

With two good-quality silage cuts in the pit now, a third will be taken with less emphasis on quality and more on quantity to fill out the pits for winter feeding.

I have no silage analysis yet, but I am hopeful for high D-value silage (>70 D-value) in the first and second cuts, which will be the basis of my winter feed for milking cows.

On average, the grass ahead of the cows is good-quality, with low levels of stem in the sward (see Dairylink table). Growth has remained constant on the farm at around 65kg DM/ha over the past four weeks, with rain over the past weekend keeping growth moving.

At this stage, all the surplus grass is removed from the grazing block, with herd demand of 60kg/ha just above daily grass growth this week of 55kg/ha. As more silage area is added to the grazing block, the deficit reduces, which provides me with a timely safety net in terms of grass supply over the next four to five weeks as growth will slow down. Cows are followed with 27 units of nitrogen on the grazing block.

Some work has been done to counteract low soil fertility flagged up from soil analysis. Very little compound fertiliser has been used, but straight phosphate 0:46:0 and potash 0:0:60 was used on deficient fields at the start of the season.

Silage area received 60 units of K and grazing received 23 units of P. I have applied CAN plus sulphur on silage area after second-cut and have been using this on the grazing ground also.

Heifer-rearing focus

Over the past three years, I have seen my heifer-rearing costs increase on the farm. Two years ago it was costing me £1,590 to rear each heifer on the farm, including wages and 20% of all overhead costs on the farm. This is now down to £1,215 for the 2015-2016 year and plans are in place to reduce this in the current year.

My issue with the heifer enterprise is not the rearing cost, but actually the number of heifers available to me, with only 15 heifers in the zero to one age category.

Continuous use of Angus and Hereford semen has resulted in a shortage of replacements. However, given that replacement heifers can be purchased at a cost lower than my rearing cost on the farm, the issue is not so much total cost of purchasing the replacements, it is more of a cashflow dilemma and finding the cash to hand out in one lump.

This year, 20 heifers scanned in-calf are due to start calving in October and will all be calved into the herd by January 2017. Even with the spread in calving within the heifer group, we can still achieve 24.5 months average calving.

In terms of cost saving, concentrate has been reduced. Last year, 780kg/heifer was fed, with nearly all of this going on young calves (three weeks to 25 weeks old) and younger heifers behind target weight. I am now weighing heifers and working to targets for weaning at 130kg, breeding 360kg and calving down at 560kg. I can see already this year I have made a saving, with heifers above target weight long before expected.

This year, my first 10 weeks of breeding in the milking herd was 100% black and white and all heifers have been bred to black and white. The result of this will be a more compact group of replacements, less pushing of the younger lighter heifers and then easier to manage at grass as one group.

The young group got weighed last weekend with a range in weight from 155kg to 285kg. The plan is to split this group and push on the lighter heifers.

From a cost perspective, more can be removed from my heifer-rearing cost. The three main costs are forage, concentrate and labour. Last year, heifers got 780kg/head of concentrate, which was mostly fed in the first seven months.

This year, heifers went out to grass in March, resulting in less concentrate and silage fed. Better grass management and more focus on keeping good-quality grass in front of heifers has replaced the purchased feed and silage.