The swing over to steer production from our normal bull beef is seeing a large reduction in feed costs and a new reliance on grass. Already, it is clear that there is an enormous variation in the quality, in the broadest sense, between the various animals.

We have just weighed the first batch that have had access to grass for the last month and the daily gain was a consistent 0.7kg.

We have closed up our first-cut silage and again the emphasis will be on getting the maximum gain from high-quality grass silage.

At this stage, the aim is to keep the cattle gaining at grass until they are about 550kg and then bring them into the shed for a maximum of 50 days when they should be 320kg to 360kg (carcase).

We have been anxious to get the fungicide and herbicide applications completely up to date

The attainment of an O= carcase with a fat cover between 2+ and 4= is essential to gain the Aberdeen Angus or Hereford bonus.

With the long dry spell forecast to come to an end this week, we have been anxious to get the fungicide and herbicide applications completely up to date, though I have never seen crops as clean with no misty muggy weather to encourage fungus diseases.

This is a crop that has made tremendous progress over the past few weeks

Nevertheless, we have applied growth regulator and fungicide to the winter barley. This is a crop that has made tremendous progress over the past few weeks. While the pods are just beginning in some of the upper flowers in the oilseed rape, it won’t be long until petal fall replaces the brilliant yellow with early green pods, hopefully.

I took the opportunity a few weeks ago to sell some winter barley forward. I don’t think I have ever seen such a large gap in the forward prices between wheat and barley – €24/t is extraordinary. It stems, I presume, from the fall in the price of oil making ethanol from maize uneconomic and so throwing more raw maize on to the market.

The result was an ever growing wet hollow

The dry weather also let us tackle a drainage job (right) that had been nagging me for years. The cause of the problem was reasonably clear – a serious breakdown in the old system put in many years ago. The result was an ever growing wet hollow that was also blocking the outlet from one of the winter barley fields and an ever growing circle of marshy pasture. We dug a new channel roughly parallel with the old drain and back-filled with plenty of gravelly stones.

We won’t know the real results until we get saturated soils again but, for now, the wet hollow is as dry as a bone.