We finished harvest in the middle of September with a field of spring oats. They came off at 15% and we they are already sold and away. We have landed well with grain movements this year, as a local feed mill has bought most of it and have been lifting the barley and oats as back loads, meaning that they have kept pace with the harvest.

It seems that our land suited winter cropping this year. Harvest started well, with winter barley yielding over 7.5t/ha. However, once we got in to spring barley, this fell away and it averaged just short of 5t/ha. The oats gave us a similar yield to the barley. Overall, we have less grain to sell but with the barley that we have sold going for £170/t and the oats for £160/t, things look a lot better this year.

As we speak we are cutting the third-cut silage, along with some surplus grass. We are looking a bit tight on the silage front but with some cows destined to spend a bit of winter on the fodder crops, we should be okay. Either side of the silage we have been busy sowing next year’s winter barley. We are using dressed home-saved seed to reduce costs. Once the barley is finished, we will plough up the large silage field and it will go in to winter wheat. Between barley and wheat, we will have over two thirds of our cereals in as winter cereals. This will improve the workload in the spring.

Dressing seed at Arnage.

To replace the silage ground coming out, we have sown out a 13.5ha field with new grass behind winter barley. The field was already fairly level, so rather than plough it up and lose what moisture was there, we levelled out the rougher areas of the field, subsoiled the tramlines and direct drilled it.

This saved us a lot of time and with the grass now emerging, it looks to have done well with the direct drilling. There are a few barley volunteers, but we will run the sheep across it soon and they can tidy that up ahead of winter.

Spring cropping

We are aiming to make as much use as possible of the land that is going through to spring cropping by putting in some form of wintering crop. So far, we have 16ha of forage brassicas and 14ha of grass. The forage brassicas were direct drilled with a Horsch Pronto in to winter barley stubble in early August. They have since received 125kg/ha of Double Top and are looking well. We have a couple of runback options with this, so we plan to put the sheep on to one end of the field and around 20 cattle on to the other.

Brassica crop that will winter one batch of cows and the ewes.

It is just at the stage where you can visibly see a difference in it day by day. We were slightly worried that there wasn’t going to be a great crop in it but we are now confident that in another month or so there will be a decent return.

The cost of feeding a cow indoors for a winter is just too expensive. While this year has forced us and many others to look at alternative methods for keeping cows fed due to the drought conditions and poorer silage yields, this is not a one-year change for us. Every day we can keep cows out of sheds and reduce the amount of silage and straw being used to maintain them is a cost saving for us.

We hope to keep a batch of the fittest cows out on the brassica for as long as possible. Even if we get to Christmas, this is a major cost saving across 20-30 cows.

Field damage control

To avoid doing too much damage to the fields during winter, we will lay out silage bales down the length of the brassica crop from the third cut just now. These can be used as the cows or sheep graze along the length of the field. While they still may need some extra bales brought in during the winter, it will cut down a lot of rutting in the fields. We have seen firsthand here what soil compaction does, so it is important to keep it to a minimum at all costs.

Weaning will be staggered, with the plan to start taking thin cows away from their calves in the next fortnight.

The grass meanwhile, was broadcast after we cultivated a spring barley stubble and rolled in. Our plan with this is to get a quick grazing from it in the back end of this year. We then intend to let it go through the spring and get an early cut of silage from it – hopefully towards the latter half of May. Once the silage is off, we will take half of the field through as grass and the other half will get cultivated out and replaced with kale to winter the cows on next year. We have spent a bit of time this year, reviewing things in the business and we see the cost of carrying cattle over winter to be our greatest problem. With this in mind, the forage crops are one of a few strategies that we are going to use to attack the winter.

We will also wean calves a lot earlier this year, to maximise cow body condition going in to winter. This is a lot easier this year as we have a more even batch of calves thanks to the tighter calving period.

Future

Looking ahead to next year, we have the bulling period down to 13 weeks, meaning that calving will be even tighter next year.

Weaning will be staggered, with the plan to start taking thin cows away from their calves in the next fortnight.

We will also scan all the cows in the coming weeks and this will give us a better idea of numbers to be dealt with over the winter. We have identified a number of cows that we want to cull for reasons such as age, calf quality and milkiness. We will also cull any cows not in calf.

To keep production and output up on the farm these cull cows will need to be replaced. We will look to do this with in-calf heifers if we are able to get them later in the year. Whatever we buy will need to fit into the type of cow that we are trying to attain here – not too big, easily fleshed, plenty of milk and docile.

Sheep

We have had some troubles with the sheep this back end. Initially, lameness in the lambs was a problem given the dry conditions and stemmy grass. With treatment, this has come under control and lambs are now starting to get away. While we have had a worming programme in place this year for the lambs, the latest dung sample showed up coccidiosis. They have now been wormed once again.

Time management is one of the most difficult things to keep on top of here at the moment – there are not enough hours in the day. It can be quite frustrating seeing jobs that need doing but not having the time to do them straight away. Still, the weather has been on our side which has made things somewhat easier.