This has to be the most challenging spring that we’ve seen for anyone with ambitions to get grass into the cow’s diet early in the season. We’re still getting a constant run of two or three good days followed by a downpour that sets everything back to square one.

It’s very frustrating and stressful at this stage of the year and especially this year when fertility has gone exceptionally well across most of the country, so there are a lot of hungry mouths to feed.

We got some urea out across most of the farm in early February and this seems to be holding grass covers and driving a bit of regrowth on these paddocks. Anywhere that hasn’t been fertilised yet is looking more yellow and grass cover is reducing on these paddocks. The paddocks that weren’t spread are the wetter ones anyway, so it’s probably a combination of the roots sitting in water constantly and a lack of nutrition that’s causing the dieback. We are lucky on this farm to have a few areas trafficable with machinery on the dry days and that is allowing us to follow cows with slurry to some extent.

We have managed to graze about a third of the farm at this stage, so we are not far behind on our grazing targets, but some of the ungrazed ground was reseeded last autumn and needs a dry week at least to move into it. We have 85% of the herd calved now.

Cows are getting maize and grass silage when they are not able to get out and graze. We have reduced meal feeding to 4kg and it looks likely now that this will have to be maintained for most of March to keep demand under control.

Cows continue to milk well under the circumstances, with production sitting at 1.85kg of solids from about 25 litres. Protein has dropped to 3.33% now with silage in the diet. It may even drop further if the weather persists for much longer.

This spring shows the value of good facilities on the farm, and while some people wouldn’t include outdoor cubicles under that heading, we are finding them a big help at the moment. We have had a few cases of mastitis this spring but all of them in freshly calved cows that were indoors at the time. The main milking herd has been very healthy so far whether on indoor cubicles, on grass or outdoor cubicles.

There has been a lot of talk of new entrants getting cows on farms first and prioritising investment on a parlour and roadways before wintering facilities. Regulations require that slurry storage is in place before stock are allowed on a farm, so it’s hard to know where this fits in on the priority list. Machinery is obviously at the bottom of the investment list, which is fair enough.

Winters like this one highlight the need for winter facilities that work for both dry cows and milking cows though.

With healthy, robust cows the standard of facility can be compromised on but it still has to keep cows clean and comfortable. At this stage, we wouldn’t ever consider going back to out-wintering stock and with costs too high and stocking rates rising, the stand-off pad doesn’t work here any more either.

Everyone has to assess their own situation but in my opinion you have to plan for the worst situation, rather than hoping for the best.