I got my second-cut silage harvested a couple of weeks ago.

It was a week to 10 days earlier than intended, but I saw a small window in the weather and decided to take it and boy am I glad I did, as there has hardly been a dry day since. There have been many heavy downpours here over the past 10 days.

Growth has held reasonably well but ground conditions have deteriorated considerably. A week ago last Saturday, I had all stock standing in the shed overnight with the intention of letting them out the next morning.

If things don’t improve shortly I will probably start to wean the calves which will ease things a little

I did let half of them out the next morning, but I walked the land that I was going to let the second batch to before I let them out and it was waterlogged so I decided to leave them in until it dried out. That was over a week ago and they are still in. The calves have access to grass so hopefully their performance won’t suffer to badly. If things don’t improve shortly I will probably start to wean the calves which will ease things a little.

I can put the calves to the good-quality aftergrass and either keep the cows housed on straw for a while or put them back to grass in small batches, that will hopefully be easier on the ground. I’m definitely not on my own with the housed cattle as I’ve had a few calls from farmers asking how quickly they could feed bales after being made.

Tidy

July can often be a wet month so hopefully August will bring something better.

I’m trying to get ahead of myself with a bit of general tidying around the yard as well at the minute.

I have a bay in a hay shed full of bits of waste timber and fallen trees. It’s been like that for over 10 years. Every year I cut up some of it for firewood and the pile gets small but of course more waste timber and fallen trees get added to it and the cycle continues.

While it’s great to have the supply of firewood, I really need the space in the shed for machinery and other things.

Good start

This year I made myself the promise that before the summer was over I would have all the timber cut up, put into bulk bags and stacked neatly somewhere else. I got off to a good start back last April, but then silage season happened and slurry and every other thing that’s needs doing during the summer.

Thankfully, my father in law has helped me by making a couple of starts and made the pile smaller. I’m ignoring a couple of fallen trees out in fields that were knocked down last winter but hopefully this will be the year I get to see the shed floor again for the first time in 10 years.