We seem to have gone from wondering will it ever rain again to wondering will we get two fine days together to wrap up silage.

As the winds of Storm Ali blew across my fields I thought to myself: "That’s the first time since the spring that there has been enough grass on the fields to dance in the wind."

With soil moisture deficits restored, the farm is growing well and we are hoping that we finally catch a break and get a decent back end.

The arrival of autumn and with fertiliser-spreading deadlines approaching, we applied our final round of fertiliser for the year.

We went with urea for the last round as there were regular showers of rain and lots of heat still in the ground, the conditions are ideal for urea to be activated and get the grass growing.

Through my involvement with the Aurivo Focus Farms and just trying to get a better handle on my grass management I have started grass measuring and budgeting which has helped us over the drought period and again as we head into the winter.

We will be following the autumn rotation planner on PastureBase and plan to start the final round on 5 October and graze into November, weather permitting.

We have secured 100% of our winter feed requirements after the second-cut pit silage eventually bulked up and we pitted this in early September.

Silage damage

The crows had inflicted a bit of damage to our first-cut silage pit during the drought period but with a quick search on donedeal.ie we bought some netting and hopefully will not have any such issues in the future.

I will test the silage in the coming weeks to see how it will meet the requirements of my in-calf heifers.

I also plan to buy some maiden heifers for my second year in milk, we planted 4ha of Stego forage rape to winter these heifers on. This method worked extremely well for us last winter and is a cheap way of keeping stock when in conversion mode.

The heifers were scanned recently with good results. We have a 5% empty rate, which could be better, but I will rescan some of these as the bulls were still with the heifers and I have not witnessed any bulling since.

We have 65% to calf in the first four weeks and 90% to calf in just over six weeks so it really will be a baptism of fire with all maiden heifers. Hopefully the building projects keep on target and we will have plenty of time to parlour train the heifers before the spring.

Other jobs

With only the fencing left to be erected, I am relieved to say the field work is drawing to a close. Roads, water and reseeding have been completed and we are ready to hit the ground running next spring.

I returned home refreshed, full of energy and with lots of new ideas for my own farm

Progress on the new milking parlour and collecting yard has been much slower, but with my builders returning next week we are hopeful that we will still have the parlour fitted by the end of October. Works are also commencing on a slatted tank for the collecting yard and we have just received our letter of approval under the TAMS II scheme.

Constant workload

The workload involved with a dairy conversion is constant, between managing the different projects and continuing my own livestock duties I have been weary on occasion. It is very important at these times to get off the farm even if only for a few hours.

I was lucky to be invited on a tour with a local discussion group recently where we saw top-class grassland management and top-class cows, I returned home refreshed, full of energy and with lots of new ideas for my own farm.

We are continuing to draft lambs for sale, we will be sending lambs to the factory from reseeded ground and from a meal-finished diet this week, so it will be interesting to compare kill out percentage.

Ewes have recovered well after the drought with the return of some decent grass and we will continue to rotate the ewes on fresh grass in the lead up to breeding season. We will also be keeping some sheep to stock our outside ground and hopefully lamb these outdoors in early April.

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