Fodder: Farmers out of silage in the southern half of the country received a lifeline on Wednesday with news that co-ops are importing fodder. This reduces the pressure of trying to keep animals fed and it’s likely that other co-ops will follow suit.

Because of all the rain over the last week, heavy soils are saturated and dry land is testing, so the grazing option is very limited. But where silage is scarce or all used up and where there is still more than 20% of the farm left to be grazed, getting milking cows out to grass for two to three hours per day is hugely important. Where grass is available, the benefits of getting some of it into cows will outweigh the risk of poaching. Not all farms can do this, but those that can should.

Air and soil temperatures have increased and farms that have nitrogen out are growing more grass, albeit still a lot less than normal. This spring is testing everyone, but the priority on every dairy farm should be to reduce exposure to income loss (both from increased costs and lost output from low yields and solids) and from a bad breeding season. Cows that lose more than half a body condition score will be under pressure to get back in calf early this season. This will have a knock on effect next year and the year after that.

Fertiliser: A good few farmers don’t have any fertiliser spread yet. This is worrying. It’s almost six months since the last application of chemical nitrogen and after a wet winter there won’t be much background nitrogen available for growth. Nitrogen is the building block for grass growth. While growth is slow now, it will stay slow unless it gets nitrogen. If nothing has been spread yet, I would go with a full bag per acre of urea as soon as you can.

This depends on ability to travel ground and the weather forecast. Rainfall in the 48 hours after spreading is what you need to look at. Soil temperature at time of spreading is less important – the nitrogen won’t be lost even if it is less than six degrees.

On many farms silage ground is very sorry looking. It’s spun out, especially if it hasn’t been grazed, or got slurry or fertiliser yet. Silage fields on out-farms would usually be grazed by heifers, but that didn’t happen this year.

In a normal year we would be closing up ground for silage by 14 April at the latest. So there is no need to panic just yet. If no slurry will be spread, then silage ground will need at least 100 units of nitrogen, along with around three bags/acre of 0:7:30 or similar product. Every 1,000 gallons of slurry per acre is the equivalent of one bag per acre of 6.5:5:30.

Calves: The oldest of the calves are being weaned on dairy farms now. Normally you would like to see them going to grass prior to going off milk, but it’s hard to do this year considering the weather.

The cold generally isn’t a problem for calves once they have shelter, but wet and cold is a recipe for trouble. If calves are being weaned indoors, feed them good-quality hay, haylage or silage before and after weaning, along with ad-lib meal.