We know that no two years are ever the same, but it never ceases to amaze how much consecutive years can differ.

Much of any grass growth last year came from this time onward, whereas this year even if there is little or no growth from now on, we have seen way more grass grown and forage conserved than throughout 2018.

Hindsight is a wonderful commodity, but if my crystal ball had been working earlier this year I could have saved myself a small fortune by slashing spending on fertiliser.

Cereal crops, which in Lanarkshire is mostly spring barley, are looking really well. In fact, many are a bit like my own and perhaps looking too good, struggling to remain standing despite being a fairly short-strawed variety.

So far with a single cut in 2019, we have baled and wrapped over 1,200 bales, and still have a 10ac field to go. It took us until later in September last year to get anywhere near that figure.

However, I don’t reckon we’ll be winning any competitions for the quality of the silage this year, although I’m yet to be convinced of the merits of going all out for quality and then having to source additional fibre in the diet, particularly for suckler cows.

Utilising all the grass in the grazing fields is also proving a problem and the topper has been employed. I’m even thinking of trying deferred grazing (leaving some fields to graze during the winter).

Machinery

Thankfully, downtime due to machinery breakdowns this year has been fairly minimal.

Other than replacing a bearing housing on the mower conditioner, which had never been right since the machine was purchased second-hand in 2009, issues have been restricted to a puncture on the loader tractor, a switch on the baler, which cost a fiver, and two burst oil hoses on the forklift.

The vintage and classic machinery has once again coped pretty well.

Bad run

Cattle on the other hand, have been a fair bit of work over the past few weeks.

The bad run started with a case of mastitis on a newly calved cow which then lost her calf, possibly down to ingesting the infected milk. The cow then seemed determined to join her calf in the afterlife and required ongoing treatment for at least a couple of weeks.

We then had a caesarean section, followed by three further cases of mastitis, all to be topped off with a cow with staggers post-calving. Thankfully, she was inside and was diagnosed and treated promptly, but it will take the value of a couple of calves just to cover the vet bill this month.

Under the cosh

Looking outside the farm, it feels as though the whole industry is under the cosh, from the uncertainty around Brexit and the threat of 40% tariffs, through to reduced consumer demand, imports and stores full of food.

We then have any amount of reports, studies and experts advocating a radical change in diets away from meat.

As an industry we seem to be almost singularly blamed for all the carbon produced in the universe.

With barely a mention of transport, leisure, shipping, aviation or fashion and the disposable consumer society, we now live in a time when people cannot see in front of their noses, never mind the ability to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

We have a big task ahead to defend and promote the benefits of meat production in Scotland.

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"It was the kind of phonecall you never forget"