On Sunday evening, farming WhatsApp groups started to light up as farmers reported their rainfall amounts over the previous 24 hours.

Thirty to 40 millimetres of rainfall was commonly reported, with the southwest seeming to get the highest amount of rain.

The heavy rain will be sure to knock a litre or two off milk yield, just at the time that cows were coming into peak production.

It’s always surprising that no matter how little rain has fallen over the last few weeks, land can get wet quite quickly.

Going back to strip wires is something most farmers thought they wouldn’t have to do again this year, but it just goes to show that April weather can be notoriously unpredictable.

In many ways doing damage now is worse than doing damage in February or March. The reason for this is that the turnaround time is much shorter now at three weeks, whereas fields grazed in February will be rested for eight weeks.

Therefore, do whatever is necessary to avoid doing damage now, even if that means reverting back to 12-hour breaks or on-off grazing or housing cows for periods.

The combination of wet grass and wet land means that dry matter intakes are going to be suppressed now. It may be beneficial to offer some roughage before or after milking for the next few days.

From a nutritional perspective, feeding silage will be inferior to feeding high-quality second-rotation grass but it may add to the overall diet in terms of balancing the fibre requirements of the cow.

Plus, feeding 1kg or 2kg dry matter of good-quality silage for a day or so won’t be a big deal and will be a small part of the overall diet.

Put it this way, it would be better to feed a bit of silage than increase the meal content as this could cause stomach upsets.