It has been rare over the last few years to see many days of uninterrupted sunshine, never mind several weeks of it. Although we are not complaining, it has made things tricky, with the dry weather not suiting our ground leading to thinner soils starting to burn off.

Our silage is split in to three goes. At Glenconglass, we take two cuts, aiming for quality and store it there. We house all the growing cattle there and target the better-quality forage to them to drive growth. The first cut came off in mid-June, yielding 155 bales. This is 95 bales less than last year.

However, the silage is a lot drier this year and they were baled with a new baler, so it is difficult to tell exactly what the difference is just now. We will get a bale weighed nearer winter to give us a better idea of yield.

First-cut silage

After the first cut was off, we spread pot ale at 10m3/ha, 120kg/ha of 8:24:24 and 220kg/ha of 34.5% nitrogen to set up for a second cut. It is coming slowly but the dry weather is holding it back.

The rest of our silage is a bulky crop that goes in to the pit at home. This is for feeding cows, so quality is not as important.

By the time you read this, we hope to have this in the pit. It will get a similar fertiliser application once the silage is off and we will again split the fields up for grazing the weaned lambs on.

Weeds

We also have a forage crop mixture in the ground for the sheep. When we sowed the barley in the spring, we left half of an eight-hectare field at the back of the yard at Glenconglass unsown, with the intention of sowing a forage crop mix in it. Since then, a cover of weeds had grown on the ploughing, so two weeks ago, we went on with glyphosate at full rate.

Last week, we had a contractor in to direct drill it in to the stale seedbed, along with 150kg/ha of 25:5:5 to start it.

Grazing

We have been busy at Glenconglass as we have been putting up fences to split some of the spring cow grazing down in to smaller blocks to give us more control over the grazing. Last year, we rotated the cows through three full-sized fields with no divisions at all. This year, with the dry weather meaning that grass growth is even shorter, we have bit the bullet and split each of those fields in two, giving us six divisions to work through. We may yet split them further with temporary fencing to let the grass get away from the cows a bit. They are simple one-wire fences, with a temporary battery unit on them for now.

At the same time as doing this, we also upgraded one of the water troughs, siting it so that it serves four paddocks. We made sure that we had plenty of capacity in the trough as well, to make sure it won’t go dry in the current conditions.

Cows and calves

The cows and their calves are still doing well, despite the shortage of grass. Bulls went in on 1 May, so by the time you read this, they will be out from the cows, having had nearly 11 weeks with the cows. We will PD them all in September and cull any empties to make sure that we are not carrying any passengers over winter.

Bulls

We did have a couple of hiccups with bulls going off their feet but fortunately, we had the extra Shorthorn for the hill heifers, so he was brought in to service a little earlier than planned.

He went out on the hill with his batch of native heifers on 1 June and will get nine weeks with them. They are currently working on a bit of hill quite close to home and the plan is to get a couple of fences up over winter to control their grazing more next year.

However, where they are working just now looks well and we plan to buy another batch this autumn to grow their numbers.

They will all be out-wintered on some rough ground, with a feed ring or two of silage.

The autumn cows are working away at Lynavoir, the land out closer to the Lecht. Most of it is already improved but they are still working some rough bits. Unfortunately, last year, we got hit by mastitis in several cows after weaning the calves too early. This year, we are keeping the calves on a week or two longer to get closer to them calving again.

Bedding

They will start again in September and the calves will be sold in the store ring at Thainstone in late November. The cows will be housed at home and the current plan is to bed them on woodchip this winter.

With the current prices for straw, we have taken action and have purchased 50t of timber from the estate to be chipped. This will do for the autumn cows and the spring cows up until just before they calve. They will go on to straw bedding at this stage.

It does mean that we have to wait an extra year to make use of the dung, to allow it to compost. However, we cannot ignore the savings and it will take the pressure off for this winter. We will still need to buy in some straw but hopefully not too much.

Sheep

We will be gathering the sheep soon. At the moment, they are out on the hill but with clipping coming up, we will have to get them home early August. While they are in, we will wean the lambs on to he silage aftermath and the ewes will be put back out on to the hill for another while yet.

This worked well for us last year and meant that come tupping time, the ewes were in great order and carried a decent level of flesh in to the winter.

Also last year, the lambs that went on to the silage aftermath performed really well, with 80 of them away fat, a lot more than in years previous. As mentioned earlier, as soon as the silage is off, we will get the fences back up and make a six-paddock rotation at Auchriachan for the lambs to go on to.

Glamping

We also mentioned in an article a while back that we were going to diversify in to glamping pods. After a couple of hiccups in planning, the project is beginning to take shape.

Construction of the pods should be underway by the time you read this and we should be ready to welcome our first guests in the autumn.