Well, here we are with over three-quarters of the harvest done by the end of August. We should be finished by mid-September. Unfortunately, yields have on the whole been fairly disastrous. The drought we experienced earlier took its toll on our fairly light land and the few acceptable fields have been where the soil is heavier.
We started harvesting on 22 July, which equalled our earliest ever start. The first field of winter barley was about 2.75t/acre with the rest doing 2t/acre to 2.5t/acre. Oilseed rape (OSR) at home only yielded 1t/acre but at least it was only 8% moisture. The contract-farmed OSR did 1.5t/acre on heavier land. Spring barley started at 1.5t/acre and has remained between that and 2t/acre. Winter wheat did 2.5t/acre at home but we finally managed a 3t crop on the contract-farmed land. I have high hopes for my spring barley, which was sown on 17 May. It was freshly ploughed and seemed to hold some moisture.
Straw yields have been even poorer than grain. We had a 45ac field of spring barley yield 457 bales last year but only 156 this year. Again, heavier land has been better with some oilseed rape fields doing 10 bales/acre. I managed to persuade my arable neighbour to turn off the straw chopper in his oilseed rape. We had to haul slurry to him in return for this, but those 115 acres and 30 acres from another neighbour will help us through the winter.
Our second cut of silage never materialised, as the cattle just kept grazing it all. We finally cut 20 acres this week. We also cut and baled any suitable grass margins around the cropping fields. Two fields of spring barley were also whole cropped into the silage pit.
We normally treat 400 bales with ammonia and I planned to do 1,000 this year. We have treated 600 bales but I don’t think we have enough bedding to sacrifice more bales for treating.
I think we will store the rest inside and can treat more in the middle of the winter once we see what we have available. Hopefully, prices of fodder and bedding will have settled down by then.
One man’s opinion was that there will be a lot of straw stored in sheds this winter. Once it is in the shed, it won’t be on the market until January. He reckoned that it would be available for £12/bale. I’m sure most of us with livestock hope that he’s right.
Our Stabiliser heifers are in two groups of 25 and we scanned them last week. Over the last 10 years, there have only been between one and five not in-calf out of 50 over a 10-week bulling period.
This year, 11 scanned empty. Some of our heifers were only 12 months old at the start of bulling and the vet thought they maybe weren’t mature enough.
I don’t think that can be the case as we have been doing the same thing for 10 years and five-month-old heifer calves have been getting caught by the stock bull. Maybe the hot weather affected semen quality.
I hope the cows aren’t similar, although there were still cows running the week before the bulls came out on Friday. We have put a different bull back in with one group for three weeks just in case. I know folk have been saying that poorer conception could be a blessing, because there would be less stock to carry through the winter on limited fodder. Maintaining output is critical for any suckler cow business, as there are so many costs to cover.