We’ve had plenty of dark thundery clouds roll over the farm in the last two weeks but it’s been difficult to wring any drop of rain out of them. We have measured a couple of millimetres here and there and the farm is green again but moisture is still a very scarce commodity in Kilkenny.

The burst of growth from that nice rain at the end of July has slowed again and although there are some showers forecast for the middle of this week, amounts are likely to be light in this region. The feed to the cows was reduced for a few days but it’s back up this week as grass gets scarce again.

It’s a very frustrating time but there’s not much we can do but wait and hope for a change sooner rather than later.

We are still at 5kg in the parlour and at about 6kg of beet pulp and at 3kg of silage outside. The cows will see grass every day but the handbrake is back on strong again.

We will finalise a contract for Italian ryegrass silage for winter feeding from a tillage farming friend next week and hopefully that will get enough rain to get a decent crop off it by late October. It’s great to see tillage and livestock farmers working together at times of need like this and it makes a big difference from the usual competition for land rental. It’s probably the only good thing to come out of this drought.

This sort of contract-growing of feed is common in New Zealand and the US and it’s something we will have to develop more in this country, especially if the price of grain and straw dips again and if the number of cows in the country continues to grow. Slurry or dung can form part of more sustainable long-term arrangements if we can get through this year’s fire brigade fix.

In our arrangement, we will buy the silage by the bale and the tillage farmer will take full responsibility for sowing, fertilising and harvesting the crop, which is his area of expertise, and we will hopefully get the bales delivered through the winter as we need them.

The seeds are sown but we would both like to see this crop up out of the ground and well established before we finalise the arrangement. We’ve seen enough plans ripped up this year by weather extremes to not count our chickens before they hatch.

Our heifers are back grazing full-time on some of the silage ground and we have fertilised half of this block for a third cut if we get enough growth. This grass is looking very well at this stage as the soil is a little heavier than the home block and stocked very light.

Autumn

With a bit of luck we might fill a silage pit from this ground and still keep the heifers out grazing well into the autumn.

We managed to sell most of our milking cows that showed up not in calf in the scan last month. They were the healthy younger cows that were milking well and had scanned clean and suitable for breeding. Most were sold to a farmer in Co Tyrone to enter a higher-input herd and will be bred to calve again next autumn.

They seem to have settled in well up there and it’s great to see them go somewhere where they will have a future rather than having to send otherwise good, healthy, young cows to the factory.

We were very happy with the price for these cows as they averaged just over €750 including transport costs and while we will miss their milk, the big bonus is having them gone so early in the season to reduce demand into the autumn.