How the weather is impacting on crops, dairy, beef and sheep

Ongoing poor weather continues to prevent tillage farmers from making progress with field work. A small amount of winter wheat was sown towards the start of the month, but growers fear that saturated conditions may negatively impact establishment.

Despite the poor weather, winter cereals are largely holding well, with the exception of crops established late or in very poor conditions. It is still too early to assess how much winter cereal will need to be replanted.

Around 1,000ac of potatoes still remain to be harvested, but growers remain optimistic about salvaging this area.

Early grazing in 2020 can best be described as stop/start, but in most cases, it hasn’t even started. Rainfall levels have been four to five times the normal for the past week, ground is saturated and grazing without doing severe damage is nearly impossible.

Farmers that have managed to get cows out have fared well in most cases up to now, but they are running out of options fast, as many dry paddocks with low covers have been grazed.

There are 38 cows calved at Tullamore Farm at the moment. Calving started on Wednesday 5 February, so space is getting tight for young calves. The plan was that some of the earliest born calves would be turned out at this stage. A centre passage of a slatted shed has been made into a temporary creep area, which is kept well bedded with straw. This will house about 40 cows.

Most of the wet areas of the farm were grazed off with ewes prior to Christmas, so don’t need to be grazed now. Heavy rain has again put a stop to the plans for fertiliser.

Current weather conditions are presenting challenges for sheep farmers on two fronts. Flocks that are currently lambing are finding it difficult to get ewes and lambs outdoors with space at a premium. The only real option for these flocks is to maintain high standards of hygiene to reduce the risk of disease establishing and increasing feeding levels to ensure milk yield is not compromised.

Where ewes and lambs are being turned outdoors, targeting sheltered fields and stocking at low rates is working ok in some cases. For out-wintered ewes in late pregnancy, increasing feeding allocations by 10% to 15% will help ewes cope better with weather extremes.