Things have been a lot calmer on the farm over the past month, with only eight autumn-calving cows left to dry off this week.

As a result, milking is taking very little time at the moment, which has given us a welcome bit of breathing space before the next busy period begins.

Last week we housed the first batch of dry cows, with the aim of having each batch housed for a minimum of three weeks before calving.

This gives them time to settle onto a silage-based diet and ensures the dry cows are receiving the correct mineral supplementation in the run up to calving.

I had been thinking that our calving pattern was gradually moving towards more autumn cows and had started to wonder whether it would make sense to move towards one main calving batch.

There are certainly advantages to autumn calving, with conception rates generally better and calves tending to be easier to rear.

However, this year has highlighted one of the difficulties with moving in that direction – we are having to house cows while there is still a considerable amount of grass available for grazing.

This is particularly noticeable this year, as grass growth over the past month has been phenomenal. In fact, September’s grass growth could be compared with what we would normally expect to see in May in previous years, with rotation lengths as short as 20 days.

I will never complain about having too much grass, but it would certainly be more useful to get this level of growth during the spring and early summer.

Grass at that time of year generally has better nutritional value, with higher dry matter intakes allowing us to produce more milk directly from grazed grass.

At this time of year, although there is plenty of grass in front of the cows, we do not get the same response from it.

There is currently enough grass to keep grazing well into October.

The limiting factor, as is usually the case here, is likely to be ground conditions rather than grass supply.

If the weather stays reasonably settled, we could potentially make very good use of the grass, but there is always a point when trying to stretch grazing too far into the autumn does more harm than good.

It’s also very unusual for us to be able to graze our out farm with heavier soils this late into September.

Preparations

We are due to start calving on 1 October, so preparations are well underway. All the houses have now been washed and are ready to be bedded ahead of the first arrivals. We are also converting a shed into dedicated calving group pens.

As usual, we probably left organising and ordering everything a little later than we should have, so work will only begin next week.

Thankfully, I still have the group pens in the other shed we used last year available, so there is a bit of a fallback if the new pens are not ready in time.

Inputs

Away from the cows and grass, the other issue that continues to dominate conversations on farms is the rising cost of inputs.

Over the past month, we have seen further increases across several areas, with the price of fuel, fertiliser and feed continuing to creep upwards.

I was discussing this with a neighbour and he mentioned all the letters that seem to arrive telling us that another company’s costs have increased, meaning they have no option but to increase their prices.

It is completely understandable, their costs are going up, so naturally they have to try to recover those additional expenses.

The problem, as my neighbour pointed out, is that we can write a letter too, but unfortunately, there is nobody for us to pass it on to. We are price takers.

That is the difficult position farmers find themselves in. When the cost of fuel, fertiliser, feed, machinery and everything else increases, we cannot simply increase the price of what we produce to cover it.

We have to absorb the increases and try to find efficiencies within the system wherever possible. Although we had a 0.5p/l rise in milk price last month, it will be thinly spread over the latest increases in input costs.

As we head into another autumn, I’ll try and not focus too much on the things we can’t change, rather the things we can.

We’ll make the most of the grazed grass that is still available, get everything ready for the cows coming into the calving period, and hopefully have a successful calving season.