Farmers should prioritise the tasks. Firstly, and where possible, get the milking cows out. With exceptional drying conditions over the past three days, there should be sections on most farms where cows can graze.

The next priority is fertiliser. Grass is turning yellow due to a lack of nitrogen, so to protect what grass is on farms and to ensure sufficient regrowths for the next round, fertiliser needs to be spread as soon as possible.

The advice, where no nitrogen has been spread to date, is to go now with 46 units of urea per acre. I was on a farm at the weekend where the farmer got a contractor in to spread with a large trailed spreader. The farmer loaded him with bags of urea that were delivered to the farm and the contractor had 100 acres spread in a few hours.

Farm safety

The next job is slurry. Again, this can be done by the contractor. Ideally, spread 2,500 gallons per acre of watery slurry on land that is grazed. But with many tanks at capacity, some will have no choice but to spread on un-grazed land too. Ideally, there should be six weeks between spreading slurry and grazing, so this will be an issue for some people.

Finally, with so much work going on, take special heed of farm safety. Rushing and taking shortcuts are the root cause of many accidents. Keep children and the elderly away from the farmyard when machinery is working.

Take care when loading bags of fertiliser. They are liable to do anything, so never stand underneath a bag or a raised loader.

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