The warm conditions of the past week have meant that the tide has turned for a lot of farms throughout the country, with high growth rates taking the pressure off for many farmers.

While some farmers are still under pressure for grass, the SRUC Barony farm campus has already cut pastures for silage.

“We have moved to a multicut system this year, which means that we are trying to get four cuts a year, or maybe five if possible,” according to farm manager Paul Kelly.

“We are probably cutting two weeks earlier than last year, we cut it on Monday, leave it to wilt for 24 hours and pick it up. Ground conditions have improved a lot over the past week.

“It is a light enough crop, but the quality will be high. Where it could be 7-8t/ac if left another two weeks, we will probably get about 4t/ac now.

“The hope is that the higher quality will mean that we can offset some of the concentrates that are fed. The target for the silage is about 30% dry matter and 12ME, or maybe even a little higher, which would be fantastic.

“A total of 260 acres have been cut to go into the 850t pit,” according to Paul.

“Fertiliser went out at the end of March with 70 units of nitrogen per acre, this was split between 40 units coming from the chemical fertiliser and the remaining 30 units coming from the slurry.

“This year we are paying an hourly rate for the chopper and the trailer as opposed to paying by the acre, as the lighter crops mean that they will be running through the ground very quickly.”

Light crops

Lighter crops are also being seen by Richard McMinn from Loch Dougal in Castle Douglas, who has 600 acres to be cut in the coming days. He is also a contractor for other farmers.

“We have to get started this week because everyone will want us later in the month. We had it done by this time last year, but field conditions are the problem, it is still very wet.

“While we have good reserves of silage left over from last year, there are a lot of farmers in the area who would have reserves cleaned out, so they will be hoping for bulk for second and third cuts,” according to Richard.

“We are probably about three weeks behind where we would usually be with grass growth,” according to Robert Parker from the Stranraer area.

“I have never in my lifetime seen the weather as bad over the last nine months as it was this year. There are a lot of farmers with pits cleaned out that will need to replenish this summer, but hopefully growth will catch up over the next few weeks.”

In Aberdeen, Magnus Sinclair has also begun to cut grass in the past few days, with 500 acres to be cut and used for an anaerobic digester.

“When it’s going into the digester it has to be very high quality so we haven’t much of a choice but to cut it as it is due to head out around the 20 May. The ground conditions are not too bad, they are better than I thought they would be but the yields will be back on what we got last year,” according to Magnus.

“We will probably get around 4-5t/acre, but the aim is to have the quality at 76-78 DMD. We are probably two weeks ahead of the curve for this area.”