Feeding: With most of the country experiencing a big drop in grass growth due to soil moisture deficits and perhaps cutting too much of the farm in early June, many farmers are having to feed extra supplement.

The first port of call when grass gets tight should always be to reduce demand by increasing the area available for the milking cows.

This can be achieved by moving other stock off the milking platform or by bringing in ground that was intended for silage.

Most fields intended for second cut have nice covers of 1,200kg to 1,500kg/ha and so are ideal for grazing.

I wouldn’t be overly concerned about grazing these, even if they were spread with fertiliser for silage, as most of the nitrogen will not have been taken up. Nor would I be worried about not having enough silage as there will be a big bounce in growth once the rain comes, hopefully at the weekend, and so the same ground, or other ground can be closed again for silage.

Meal costs vary. At this stage, you don’t need a very high-spec concentrate.

All that is needed is a fibre source. Some merchants are offering fodder stretcher-type nuts which are €30/t to €40/t cheaper than standard dairy rations. In other cases, I am hearing of merchants mixing lower-cost straights in with dairy nuts, eg 9t of dairy nuts mixed with 3t of soya hulls. This reduces the overall cost of the feed and can be blown into a bin and fed through the in-parlour feeders. See more on managing grass on pages 29 and 31.

Accounts: A number of farmers were in contact looking for more details on comments made last week about tax planning. Essentially, most accountants are not tax advisers. Small independent accountancy firms may not have the expertise to advise on tax planning, even though they may be very good accountants. Specialist tax consultants with expertise in agriculture should be brought in to give tailored advice. In most cases, these people will work with existing accountants. However, some farm businesses have outgrown their accountant’s ability and they should move to a bigger firm with more expertise. For many farmers, the biggest annual expense is tax so it pays to get the best advice available from as many sources as possible.

Summer calving: After the announcement by Glanbia to restrict peak milk supply, there was some talk of summer calving as a means of overcoming the restrictions. What heretofore spring-calving farmer fancies calving cows for the next six weeks and feeding calves for the next five months? Calving in late June and early July will mean cows will be dry for the peak milk months of May and June and would need to be dry for April also. It has been found to be the least profitable time to calve a cow as it doesn’t maximise winter bonus or a second spring peak when cows go to grass. Farmers thinking about putting cows in calf next October to calve next July need to have a serious think about the impact on workload and farm profitability. Yes extra milk will be produced with the least amount of extra milk produced at peak, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. Over-fat cows and summer mastitis are other problems.