The wet, late spring forced us to abandon our normal first-cut silage. We didn’t get making silage till mid-June – some was a week later. We have a tidy but smallish heap in the yard. We had the full intention of taking a large second cut but growth has been so poor with almost no recovery that it would have been mid-September at the earliest before we had a reasonable bulk of material, and at that time of the year sugars are low and moistures can be high, depending on weather conditions.

We have therefore decided to scrap most of the second-cut silage and graze the grass. Instead, we will keep the bulk of the oaten straw and supplement it as needs be with meal and minerals.

With this change in plan, we are ready to start buying in weanlings but so far – not surprisingly – marts are tiny.

I had hoped to start the oats early this week but the welcome weekend drizzle and the dry forecast for later in the week has let us postpone it with an easy mind. I hope I am making the right decision but this is a fortnight to three weeks earlier than normal. We are now bringing the cattle that were out until now in for their final intensive finishing period. We are pleasantly surprised at how well they have done over the last few months, with various lots averaging from 0.7kg to 0.9kg of liveweight gain a day. This is despite them grazing grass that had got too strong and fibrous, but is of course very high in dry matter.

The only conclusion I can come to is that the dry, warm weather has suited grazing cattle better than the normal lush material of typical spring and early summer.

They have also been much more content than normal with none of the usual bunching and trampling that a cold, wet period normally brings with grazing bulls.

We have also desiccated the oilseed rape using a pod sealant as an insurance policy – we will leave it for three weeks or so. The target date for harvesting is now set for the first few days in August, while all the winter barley straw has been efficiently baled and removed.