Weather: With most of the country either waterlogged or flooded, it’s proving a real challenge for those out-wintering stock. High-yielding fodder crops such as beet are worse affected as the area allocated per day is small, so the number of cows per square metre is high and more damage is being done as a result. On-off grazing is the best way to avoid excess damage and to keep utilisation rates high. For dry cows, two two-hour grazing breaks should be sufficient to get over 90% of their daily allocation of the feed.

When not grazing the crop, all they need is a dry lie. This could be on a roadway or a dry section of the field that was previously grazed, or else sacrifice a section of a relatively dry grass field. The same applies to those grazing kale or deferred grass. When on-off grazing, make sure that every cow has access to the crop when grazing. Longer feed faces work better in the wet and you must use a back-fence to fence off previously grazed areas.

Make sure to repair any gutters or shoots that got blown off in the storms last weekend. Open slurry tanks and lagoons are filling up fast, and with a month to six weeks to go before the first of the slurry can be spread, the last thing you want is rainwater getting in. Where slurry is being exported to a different farm, forms must be with the Department of Agriculture by 31 December.

Of course, safety is paramount. Keep children and the elderly out of the farmyard during high winds and rain. Secure any swinging doors. Strip back enough plastic from the silage pit on good days, so you don’t have to go up on to the silage pit on windy days.

Finance: Now is the time to be pulling together all of your costs for the year, if you have not already done so. December is the best month to do this. I know that not all costs will be incurred but you will have a good idea of what is going to be spent between now and year-end and you can also budget for income. Use this information to fill in the profit monitor. The key thing is to know your costs of production, including drawings, capital repayments and taxation. The profit monitor doesn’t include these figures because they are not directly comparable between farms, but they are intrinsic costs to your business. When you know your own costs of production, you can budget for next year. January is probably the best month for doing budgets; it’s a new year and you are refreshed after Christmas.

Soil Sampling: December and January are the main months for soil sampling. It’s a small investment for a big return, provided action is taken with the results. The key thing is to do the whole farm at once. This way, you are getting a true picture of the fertility status of your farm. You should be able to get samples taken and analysed for around €15/sample. The return on capital from fixing soil fertility is huge.