With my late perennial reseeds I was comfortable enough leaving the silage for this week. However, we have definitely been caught out by the weather. It may have been a dry spring but after continuous rain all day on Saturday, and on and off heavy showers since then, the grass is too wet and some of the land, especially the reclaimed areas, needs a few days to dry out to take the heavy machinery. In addition, my contractor is seeing a backlog building up which is further pushing the date back and the quality down.

The quality of first-cut silage is so important that I am now realising that maybe the northern farmers who took light cuts during the dry spell were right.

While there is no point in panicking at this stage, I would like to have our first crop in the pit.

Meanwhile, on the day-to-day business, we are getting excellent utilisation of the grass using zero grazing – it would seem from the weighings we have done that we are getting greater weight gains than from normal grazing but zero grazing comes at a cost and I am still not sure if there is an extra margin achieved.

Nevertheless, I am surprised at the amount of people I am bumping into who are carrying out some degree of zero grazing both in dairying and in beef, especially bull beef production.

We will know more clearly when the bulls reach 500kg to 550kg liveweight and come in for their final fattening period.

Income difference

The difference between dairy farm incomes and those from every other mainstream farming enterprise is stark and the latest Teagasc Farm Income Survey figures demonstrate it clearly.

Over the last while, I have received two proposals for arrangements that would involve us leasing out the entire farm and seeing a large dairy farm emerge.

The overall output and profit potential increase from the land looks compelling and if I were at a different stage in life, it would be difficult to ignore the outlook for increased profitability.

Taking these factors into account, I was not that surprised when I saw two prominent tillage farming families in the general Wexford area deciding to go into dairying.

At this stage, we have simply given the latest proposal to our accountant and solicitor for an informed view.