Over the last 10 days or so, we sold some more of our dairy cross steers with an average weight around 325kg carcase, grading P and O and an average age of 27 months. We also sold a few of our remaining young bulls at an average weight of 424kg, average age 21 months, and conformation from U+ to R=. It was, I think, the English poet Thackeray who said “there is nothing like breeding in horses, dogs or men”. He might have added cattle.

I have been following the Irish Farmers Journal trial dairy beef farm in Tipperary and I am struck by the detailed measurements available on the sires of the calves. This information does not seem to be readily available to the average buyer. I would greatly welcome it.

At the end of last week, I had to admit final defeat in trying to save a bull with mycoplasma bovis

We have now about 50% more dairy cows than beef and this gap will, in my view, widen rather than reduce. In the immediate years ahead, we will need a viable dairy to beef system.

At the end of last week, I had to admit final defeat in trying to save a bull with mycoplasma bovis. We had at least two visits from our vet. To be fair, after one look he expressed severe doubt as to whether the bull would ever recover.

Nevertheless we said we would give it a go. We put him on a prescribed course of strong antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and after a while he got up but it was clear the infection was still there and while we had great hope for a while, he made no more progress and in fact began to go backwards. There was no option but to call it a day.

New Zealand has an intensive eradication scheme with compensation to get rid of this scourge. Here we seem to ignore it and the losses it causes.

This year so far there have, unlike last, been no beating rain and gales that caused widespread lodging and harvesting difficulty in last year’s oat crop

Meanwhile, out among the crops the rain has worked wonders for the beans, which despite being in flower have visibly grown taller with just the very beginning of pods being visible. The oats has also improved. This year so far there have, unlike last, been no beating rain and gales that caused widespread lodging and harvesting difficulty in last year’s oat crop.

I am more concerned with what looks like early senescence in the February-sown winter wheat. We have spent a lot on this crop and I expected it to stay green well into July. In fact it looks to be senescing before the main October sown crops.

Recently, I mentioned we had used the gap between first-cut silage and the beginning of the harvest to put down some new concrete. What surprised me was the clear view that the old concrete we dug up had to be trucked off the farm and sent, at significant cost, to a regulated site and put through a crusher for reuse – exemplary environmental regulation but adding a significant cost to an ordinary maintenance job on a standard cattle farm.