Last July I remember writing that 2017 had been (to that point) a superb year for grazing livestock.

How you can jump to the wrong conclusions very quickly. The weather then turned for the worse and went downhill every week after that. What started as a good year turned out disastrous.

After the wet summer and autumn of 2017, it has been nice to have some really dry weather.

Farming in Fermanagh, there is no way that I would look for rain.

One thing that I have learned about this part of the country is that it always comes eventually. In fact, the dry weather has really suited us here and we are having an excellent year, and long may it continue.

However, there are even farmers in these parts who are looking for rain. The same people were complaining about nine months of wet weather, and they are now complaining about the dry weather after a few weeks. Memories are very short.

The way I look at it is that we have no control over the weather, so we must deal with whatever comes along. But this dry weather is much more preferable to prolonged periods of wet weather.

Growth

This year our grass growth has not been as good as last year, but our grass utilisation has been a lot better.

We have also done some things that other farmers would probably not agree with. For example, we kept sowing fertiliser no matter how dry it got. I’m of the opinion that you should sow fertiliser when the ground is dry, because there will be enough times when the ground is too wet. This has helped keep the grass growing and with a bit of green colour in it.

Also, instead of topping, we have been cutting paddocks that have gone to stem and this has helped maintain some quality in the swards.

Paddocks

There is one thing we have done differently on the farm this year that I never thought would be possible for us.

We have most of the farm set up in square paddocks or as close to it as possible, with each drinking trough servicing four paddocks.

I have read (in books and seen on demonstration farms) about putting a temporary diagonal wire across paddocks and then you have twice as many paddocks and all serviced by the same amount of drinking troughs.

I never thought or even believed that this would work for me, as the traffic around the drinker might be too great. But I have given it a go this year, and it has worked a treat.

Grazing blocks that would normally have only lasted three days are now lasting five to six.

After three days in a paddock it is sometimes hard to get cattle to clean out the remaining grass. By splitting the paddocks in two we have managed to get all the grass eaten off and we have stretched the rotation at a time when grass growth has slowed.

Successful

I am surprised how easy this was to do and how successful it has been. We do not have big supplies of grass in front of us, but there is enough. We have taken paddocks out for bales, but have not had to top paddocks, so this means that we have wasted practically no grass.

We could not have done this if the ground was wet. It’s easy to complain about the weather, but it comes and goes and we must learn to deal with whatever it throws at us.

There is good advice out there to help you deal with all situations.