We’ve had a few fine days again at last in Clara after a very tough couple of weeks of daily rain and just miserable grazing conditions.

Ideally this is the end of it now and cows can stay out full-time on grass for the rest of the season.

We have a bit of repair work to do on some paddocks and some areas will have to be minded over the next few months, but all in all the farm has come through in good enough shape.

The feed bill is up and milk production is down after all the disruption, but hopefully the herd can bounce back now that silage feeding is finished and grass is back on the menu full-time.

We might keep concentrates up at 4kg to 5kg for another couple of weeks though to try to help them to recover fully and get back on target for milk production.

The maiden heifers managed to stay out despite a few mucky corners in paddocks and there looks to be enough grass now to keep them happy through breeding, as long as the weather settles down and temperatures stay at normal levels.

We are only a couple of weeks away from breeding, so a bit of kindness this week would be very welcome.

There is enough fertiliser out for grazing for the moment, but we might top-up the silage ground next week if ground conditions continue to improve.

Everything is still a bit tender so it might be better to wait another week for ground to recover a bit more, especially on the wetter areas of the farm.

Reseeding

We will also look at some reseeding jobs next week if the rain stays away. Ground will probably have to dry another bit before we can make a start on cultivation, but we could have it grazed off and sprayed at least and start getting our ducks in a row for when we can get going.

We have some multi-species seed in the shed for these paddocks so it will be interesting to see how this performs over the next few years.

The first batch of calves will be weaned this week and we will get them out to grass as soon as possible.

We will put a creep feeder out with these girls and a bale of hay for the first few weeks at grass to try to avoid the summer scour issues that have appeared over the last few years.

These calves will graze some of the re-seeded paddocks for the summer, so ideally it performs well and they perform as well on it.

We have seen some very impressive looking beef young-stock on multi-species swards around the country over the last few years. They were outperforming their contemporaries on conventional swards with some exceptional growth rates and significantly reduced days to slaughter.

Vitality

The health and vitality of the stock on the multi-species swards was particularly impressive, so we want to capture some of that performance with our replacement heifers.

The added benefit of reduced fertiliser inputs with these swards is also very attractive at the moment for both the environment and the pocket, so the plan is for them to do the business for us on that front.

The area for reseeding was soil tested over the winter, so we will bring everything up to target before sowing to give the seed the best chance to germinate and establish over the coming months.