It was a breezy night but dry, with the forecast for continued broken weather and the contractor brought in to do the gluten-free oats kept cutting until after 2 o’clock on Sunday morning.

With just a few hours left to do, we still have not got the crop finished. The promised dry spell on Tuesday failed to materialise, but I still hope to snatch a few hours before the end of the week.

The day we started the oats, we finished the oilseed rape. It had looked to be a terrific crop, but something went wrong. While the lorries looked full, they weighed about 20% less than the best estimate from our reliable haulier.

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This 20% gap between estimate and reality was repeated load after load. So what was the cause?

Was it the switch to protected urea from the standard Calcium Ammonium Nitrate? Was it an undiagnosed disease? Or was it due to the continuous wet weather during what should have been the “grain filling“ period during late June and July?

Talking to a few people, all had reports of disappointing weights from the oilseed rape crop of 2023, but not as severe as ours.

We haven’t got the oil percentages yet, but I am not optimistic. In the meantime, I have taken a sample to see if anything emerges that could have been prevented.

The oats itself lived up to its reputation as a crop that adapts to difficult wet weather. It seems to be yielding well at a moisture of 17%.

The oilseed rape did about 1.5 tonnes compared with last year’s 2 tonnes plus, and of course, a much lower price.

On the cattle side, we are now selling the end of those born in 2021. So they are just coming up to 28 to 29 months of age. We took them in from the grass to speed up their finishing, and the few weeks inside on a silage and barley diet worked wonders for their finish.

But after all that, these dairy beef Angus crosses killed out at just less than 300kg carcase weight. Granted, they are pretty well the final ones to go, but the sooner the new beef genetic index becomes widely used and available, the better.

This kind of performance is so far below the often quoted target of 340kg carcase at 22 to 24 months, that we need a dramatic change if the system is to have anything resembling a commercial future.