The farm is running reasonably smoothly at the moment with enough rain falling and just enough heat forecast to keep grass growth ticking along well. Our second-cut silage should be ready for harvest later this month. We will let this bulk up a bit yet and ear mark it for dry cow feed over the winter. The first cut was excellent quality, which gives us good options for youngstock and milking cows.

We also made 300 bales of surplus off the milking platform last week. If growth continues we should get another round of bales early next month. We will try to target some paddocks that haven’t been mowed or topped yet this year for the next round of bales.

Breeding

The bulls are with the cows for three weeks now. We have noted down 16% of the herd served over those three weeks, so hopefully over 80% of the herd held to the six weeks of AI and we don’t get too many surprises with long repeats or embryo losses etc.

We are moving into better-quality grass over the next week, with all swards either baled or topped on the last rotation so we will see if we can hold above

The cows have dropped in milk slightly over the last few weeks with yield at 1.94kg MS and moving closer to 1.9kg MS than the 2kg that we would like to see them maintaining.

We are moving into better-quality grass over the next week, with all swards either baled or topped on the last rotation so we will see if we can hold above 1.9kg at least for the month of June. Butterfat is 4.18% and protein is sitting around 3.64%.

Climate plan

Off farm, we have seen a comprehensive Climate Action Plan published by the Government this week.

Agriculture has a lot of targets to meet over the next 10 years. Some are very reasonable measures with a benefit to the farmer and some will take a reasonable amount of investment on-farm with very little trade-off, albeit they are usually grant aided.

There are areas that we need to improve on in agriculture and we need to be very careful to protect the environment for future generations while we go about our business in this lifetime. “Upping our game” in certain areas is necessary, but we would obviously like to be shown a route to recoup some of this effort and investment through premiums in the marketplace for this lower carbon produce.

Recycling 20 years ago was something that our American cousins did, but was almost unheard of in rural Ireland. We changed our mindset, we started to pay bin charges, segregated our rubbish and I don’t think too many of us would want to go back. It’s just the right thing to do.

We will have to substitute the lower environmental footprint of protected urea for CAN where possible over the next few years

Low-emission slurry spreading is very similar to the recycling culture. There’s less waste of ammonia, it should grow more grass and waste less through contamination or refusals. It’s probably easier on the relationship with our neighbours out the country as well. The grants available for switching are obviously working too, with a 10-month waiting list at the moment for new slurry tankers with low-emissions technology.

We will have to substitute the lower environmental footprint of protected urea for CAN where possible over the next few years.

We will be encouraged to plant more trees to sequester carbon and improve grassland infrastructure to produce meat and milk more efficiently.

Whether we like it or not, carbon mitigation is an expression that we will become very familiar with over the next few years

There are a variety of other measures and areas to look at over the next few years and plenty of gaps or weakness to be filled in over course of the programme. Part of the plan is to continue to measure where we are in terms of our carbon efficiency in Ireland and hopefully to find a way to market that position into the future.

Whether we like it or not, carbon mitigation is an expression that we will become very familiar with over the next few years.

Most of the measures have a cost attached to them, but they should also have some benefits in terms of efficiency on-farm.

Hopefully we can work with this plan as it evolves in the future and move towards a more sustainable future for agriculture in Ireland.