Weather

Much like for the last four or five weeks, the weather is dominating discussion. Some places are much worse than others and where it is bad, it is very bad. You cannot have upwards of 200mm of rain without massive consequences for ground conditions. Heavy soils just don’t have the capacity to drain that water. If damage is being done by grazing, then cows should be housed. Land can tolerate being damaged once in a year, but not twice. Conditions are usually testing in October/November, so save the damage for then. According to Met Éireann, better weather is on the way. More of the grazing season is yet to come, so I would be optimistic that if the rest of August and September are good, things will correct themselves. Elsewhere, second-cut silage is a grab-and-go exercise. Some farmers are asking about additives, but other than molasses or acid there’s no additive that can turn bad silage good. Keep watching the forecast, as there can be opportunities between the wet days.

Reseeding

Sticking with the wet weather theme, its tough going on reseeds. There is a special Focus on reseeding in this week’s paper, with Kieran Mailey highlighting some practical tips for farmers that have been caught out by the weather after spraying off a field, or have new seeds struggling in wet conditions. It is getting late now for anyone thinking of doing reseeding. All the land area will be needed in the coming weeks for building up grass for autumn. Fields that are burned off now will be doing well to be ready for the first grazing in early October. At that stage it will be more difficult to carry out post-emergence spraying. It is probably too late now anyway for the likes of red and white clover, and multispecies. Those seeds need to be sown earlier in the year, so their root system is well established before going into the dark and wet winter. Grass seeds can still be sown right up to late September, but it’s far from ideal.

Flexible milking

Perhaps it’s the lower milk price this year compared to last year, or the fact that farmers are more jaded by bad weather and more work, but there’s a resurgence of interest in 13 times milking. This usually means not milking the cows on a Sunday evening. Previous research has shown that the impact on milk yield is minimal. Teagasc is even conducting trials on milking 10 times in seven days and that is showing positive results too. One important factor is to ensure that cows are well fed on the evenings they are not being milked. Give them plenty of grass or set up a batt latch on a strip wire, timed to go off at milking time.

Bloat

There are reports of bloat in dairy cows this week. Clover contents are high and grass DMs are low – a risky combination. Use preventative measures, such as 12-hour breaks in high-risk situations, or include roughage (hay/straw/stemmy silage), or add bloat oil to water. Where bloat is observed and it’s not too serious (cows not agitated), move the herd to a very small allocation in a different paddock, with more stem in the grass.