The cows are out at last. They have just finished the first three-week cycle. They should have gone on 1 February, but torrential rain prevailed.

The final two months of winter saw an unprecedented onslaught of mastitis like we’ve never seen before, possibly due to the fact that the straw available was of very poor quality. It has been suggested that micro toxins in the maize silage were causing it, but a more likely cause was three of 20 cluster flushes were found to be not working.

The problem was diagnosed as rubber valves inverted, which possibly occurred during the freeze-up three weeks before. Once this was solved, the problem continued and under further investigation we found the pera acid was not being delivered into the cluster flush. Computerised parlours are brilliant when they work, they are a nuisance when they don’t work, but they’re an enormous problem when you don’t know they’re not working. We are constantly learning new skills in observation and detection.

Straw shortage

The enormous straw shortage looked like being exacerbated by the demand for straw across the water by Irish farmers who were suffering even greater problems than us so, in desperation, I turned cows out. This coincided with a fine week, which yielded prodigious grass growth, meaning the paddocks got even farther away from the cows.

So I formed a separate group of in-calf and bulling heifers to follow the cows round the paddocks to try to pull them down to a reasonable level. The last two weeks have been very patchy weather-wise, but we have managed to keep the cows out. The mastitis situation is improving - where the blame was, we’re still not quite sure, but it had got so bad we created a second herd of cows that were milked last to try to control it.

Grass analysis

Now the cows are out at grass, we are taking grass samples and having them analysed. Last week’s selection of five samples yielded dry matter content fairly consistent around 17, but crude proteins varied from 18 to 26. What would you pay for concentrates (meal) at 26% protein?

Breeding

We’ve recently had a buyer return for two more young bulls and we’re very pleased that the current crop of heifers from our own bull are yielding over 5.5% butter fat at grass. Very pleasing, but since the other end of the table has spent the last 40 years in charge of the breeding policy, it’s only right she should take some credit for this achievement.

An Irish visitor staying this week for Badminton voluntarily commented how good our herd looked, particularly in comparison with the herds in Ireland who appear to have come out of the winter in a very lean condition.

Fertiliser application

We were very lucky that early in the spring Steve (who does a large proportion of our contract work) acquired some flotation wheels for his tractor. Each tyre is 4ft wide and was able to travel fields during the rainy season that you couldn’t walk across without leaving footprints.

It meant we were able to get the fertiliser on as normal, ie with one bag 34N every three weeks, three bags for the silage and two for the grazing. This is a policy of one bag every three weeks for the last three years (which the other end of the table always criticised ), but we stuck to our guns and are now vindicated, since this has become an official recommendation. The first application gets the grass growing, so it responds quicker to subsequent applications and if it rains you are likely to lose less through leaching because of the heavy rain.

Remember, although you have to live for today, you must always farm as if you will farm forever

I attended a talk six weeks ago given by an Irish speaker who was flown in for the day, who said that since we accidentally had not put the sulphur fertiliser on the first round, we were likely to lose no more than a third of this first application, a very useful mistake to make. Hopefully, the furious grass growth will use up more than the predicted two units per acre per day and produce enough bulk to go silaging mid-May.

As bad as the back end of this winter has been, it would appear that over the water it has been far, far worse. All I can say is they have my greatest sympathy, but remember, although you have to live for today, you must always farm as if you will farm forever.

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