Farmers would be better off doing a rain dance than burning diesel trying to spread water given the current soil moisture deficit, attendees were told at the Carbery Milk Quality award winners farm walk on Thursday last.

Head of dairy knowledge transfer with Teagasc Joe Patton gave that message in response to an earlier question regarding whether it was worth farmers' time spreading soiled water to help grass grow in the current dry spell.

Over 650 attended the event on the farm of the Buttimer family at Knockskeagh, Lyre, Clonakilty, Co Cork, and host farmer Darren Buttimer echoed similar sentiments to Patton.

“It would make it green, but it won’t grow grass, we’ll just have to put up with it until the rain comes.”

Behind on production

The 2025 milk quality award winner and supplier to Lisavaird Co-op said that production is behind on the same time last year. Currently, cows are doing 1.83kg MS/cow, which is back on earlier in May and June.

“We’re way behind on production on where we were last year. We were good for May, we had pre-mowed, topped and had everything right for June.

"Our covers were right in June, it wasn’t that they were heavy, there was no kind of leaf in the grass and they dropped the most of four litres in June. I don’t know was the ground gone hungry.”

On how he was managing the current dry weather, he said: “We haven’t spread fertiliser in two weeks; we could see this coming - I just don’t think it will make any difference until we get some rain.

"The cows are getting 4.5kg of nuts with hulls mixed through it and getting about silage in the yard around milking. They have access to it as they walk in and as they walk out. It kind of works ok, but it’s a pain to be doing it at this time of year.”