We just finished off a busy week on the farm, with the last reseed for 2026 completed, third-cut silage in and the spring-calving batch scanned.

The reseed was ploughed this time around. The ground hadn’t been ploughed as long as we can remember, and we were impressed with the soil that it turned over.

Our two autumn reseeds last year were tracked badly by the rain, which brought up stones, moved clay and made them difficult to cut. To try and avoid this again, I decided to go slightly earlier, so hopefully it will have a good opportunity to establish well.

We also decided not to roll after the grass seed was sown. Although rolling encourages good seed to soil contact, hopefully by leaving a looser surface it will allow the rain to drain through it rather than run along the surface. Time will tell, and I’ll keep you updated on how it goes.

Third-cut silage was mowed on Friday and lifted on Saturday, although it got one shower early on Friday morning thankfully the weather held out.

Although, we were happy enough with the crop of grass and should have plenty of silage for the winter ahead, with eight weeks growth between second and third cut I would have thought there would have been a lot more bulk.

Rotation

Over the past 10 days there has been considerably more grass growth on paddocks than the previous two months. In the last 10 years of managing grass I don’t think we have ever had to extend to a 30-day grazing rotation in July.

However, with the warm, damp weather since mid-August, conditions are now perfect for grass growth. Although we have had quite enough rain now, I know we are in a fortunate position compared to many farmers further east and south, who have gone weeks without rain and have already consumed large proportions of their winter feed.

The rain certainly doesn’t make the daily jobs on the farm any easier, but when you see so many people in desperate need of it, perhaps we should count ourselves lucky that it’s raining again!

Scan

Unfortunately, our final scan didn’t go as well as I would have wanted. Although we had an initially good scan for cows within the first month, we had a few embryonic losses and poor conception rates or heats not shown for a lot of June.

I didn’t work out the overall conception rate, as I knew it would only annoy me more. However, just going through the scanning list the main problem was with the first-lactation heifers, where the conception rate was only 25%, which is far from ideal.

I don’t know what has led to this, whether the heat stress and plant stress impacted fertility or perhaps it was vaccinating for bluetongue during breeding, but there isn’t a lot I can change now.

I will carry most of the heifers into the autumn batch, but I will cull a number of cows that have had previous fertility, cell count or feet issues. Although I had previously talked about moving cows all to one calving batch I hadn’t really planned it for anytime soon – maybe the cows are moving to autumn calving by themselves – as they say everything happens for a reason.

We have availed of DAERA grants in previous years, such as the feed-to-yield system and the robotic scraper, which have both been fantastic additions to the farm, improving efficiency and animal health simultaneously.

However, this time around, a lot of the items in the latest Sustainable Farming Investment Scheme seem to have a large number of different conditions attached. For example, the cubicle bedder has to be electric and a silage feed pusher has to be able to detect levels of silage in the passage too.

We were also considering heat-detection collars for the heifers, but they can’t be claimed unless you require a base station. We already have a base station and would only require a booster station in the heifer house to connect back to the original equipment.

It seems like some of the conditions are making it difficult to justify investing in equipment that would genuinely improve efficiency on the farm.