Finally, we can wave goodbye to the meteorological extremes of 2018 and hopefully the new year in 2019 will bring something more manageable and straightforward in terms of weather patterns. The farm is starting in a good place at least, with a good cover of grass and good ground conditions after another mild dry spell of weather.

Hopefully we don’t use it all up now through the dry period and some of it is left for February and March to get the cows and heifers out early.

We will move early with small amounts of fertiliser and slurry in a couple of weeks if the conditions hold reasonably well.

We might also push out small numbers of heifers early to take advantage of the higher than usual grass covers and to hopefully spare a bit more silage. We can pull them back in if the weather turns again.

We should have enough silage stocks to get through either way with a good pit of maize still held in reserve for buffer feeding freshly calved cows. We will probably feed the cows extra concentrate from the start of lactation this spring as well to keep some feed in reserve in case things break down again later in the spring, or in the summer.

Stocking rate

We will leave the stocking rate the same as the last few years at around three cows to the hectare on the milking platform and 2.4LU/ha on the whole farm.

We will keep this monitored for the next year or two and make decisions around this based on a few years’ data rather than over-reacting to one blip with once-in-a-generation rain, snow and drought in the same 12 months.

Food security inside the farm gate is probably a lot more of an issue in Ireland at the moment than it is outside the farm gate, but we made plenty of surplus feed in 2017 and we will again over the next few years.

For us, it is about having a contingency bank of feed in place if and when it is needed and probably reacting earlier with straights to protect stocks of forage.

We are due to start calving again on 20 January, so we will take a few days off this week and then it’s back into the full work routine after taking it reasonably easy through the Christmas period. Most things are organised ahead of time this year, so we should get through calving reasonably smoothly and without too much stress.

Calving

The working day hopefully won’t really get busy until February when over half of the cows will be calved and milking. The calf sheds start to fill up a bit then as well.

Hopefully the automatic feeders run reasonably smoothly and take some of the work away. It’s time to burn off a few of the Christmas pounds now anyway so it will be great to get back into it and get some calves on the ground and see what this generation of heifers’ calves are like.

January also means conference season again with a couple of high-profile dairy conferences scheduled. The Irish Grassland Conference is on earlier in the month and a bit further out from calving so that will be the target for this year.

There is an interesting lineup and hopefully plenty to learn, as well as a last chance for a bit of socialising before D-day.