It has been great to see a massive improvement in the weather this week, and it will probably not be long until we forget about the poor spring we endured.
I am now well into breeding season with my spring-calving cows, and so far there has been lots of activity, with the heats both strong and long.
I am always a bit concerned when turnout is delayed. In the past I have found it can have a detrimental effect on fertility. Hopefully, conception will be as good as the heats this year.
However, the breeding heifers are a different matter. So far there has been very little activity, and it is starting to concern me. At the time of writing, I have only caught three heats in the heifers.
I expect that is as a result of the late turnout. I like to get my breeding heifers out by the middle of March, which allows them to have two months to do a good thrive, and get a bit of extra weight on.
This year they did not get out until the end of April and they are behind where I would like them to be. There is not a lot I can do at this stage, and I will just have to try and keep them thriving now that they are out at grass.
A reseed from last September has performed strongly this spring.
Reseed
I did a lot of reseeding last year, and the benefits of that are starting to come through.
Some was done in July and performed well last year, with several grazings taken off before winter. It is now growing nicely.
However, there was other reseeding that took place in September. It got heavy rain after it went in. The rain did wash tracks in the soil, and in the low-lying places water lay all winter.
I was extremely disappointed and I could not bear to look at it all winter.
I convinced myself that it would have to be redone in the spring.
As it turned out, I got out early onto this land with urea using a quad sower, and this give it a bit of a kick-start.
I cut bales on it about three weeks ago and then applied slurry. It is actually looking particularly good now, and any notion I had about redoing it is long gone. I am really pleased with it now.
To make it even better, there is masses of clover in it. With the reseed being late and then the really wet weather I was sure that I had wasted my time including clover in the seed mix.
We had talked about it all winter and agreed that we would never do a late reseed again. We might now have to come up with a different answer.
Battle
It is a reminder of just how extremely hard it is to know if you are doing the right thing or not. You can do everything by the book and then the weather messes things up.
But the thing about the weather is that it has a habit of evening itself out, so if we give things time, they usually get sorted.
My reseed is a good example of that, but the problem with my breeding heifers is that I have not got a lot of time to spare.
If they do not breed and hold in-calf by the end of June, then they have missed the boat.
I will do my best to give them every chance, but it is always a battle against the weather, and sometimes the weather wins.
It has been great to see a massive improvement in the weather this week, and it will probably not be long until we forget about the poor spring we endured.
I am now well into breeding season with my spring-calving cows, and so far there has been lots of activity, with the heats both strong and long.
I am always a bit concerned when turnout is delayed. In the past I have found it can have a detrimental effect on fertility. Hopefully, conception will be as good as the heats this year.
However, the breeding heifers are a different matter. So far there has been very little activity, and it is starting to concern me. At the time of writing, I have only caught three heats in the heifers.
I expect that is as a result of the late turnout. I like to get my breeding heifers out by the middle of March, which allows them to have two months to do a good thrive, and get a bit of extra weight on.
This year they did not get out until the end of April and they are behind where I would like them to be. There is not a lot I can do at this stage, and I will just have to try and keep them thriving now that they are out at grass.
A reseed from last September has performed strongly this spring.
Reseed
I did a lot of reseeding last year, and the benefits of that are starting to come through.
Some was done in July and performed well last year, with several grazings taken off before winter. It is now growing nicely.
However, there was other reseeding that took place in September. It got heavy rain after it went in. The rain did wash tracks in the soil, and in the low-lying places water lay all winter.
I was extremely disappointed and I could not bear to look at it all winter.
I convinced myself that it would have to be redone in the spring.
As it turned out, I got out early onto this land with urea using a quad sower, and this give it a bit of a kick-start.
I cut bales on it about three weeks ago and then applied slurry. It is actually looking particularly good now, and any notion I had about redoing it is long gone. I am really pleased with it now.
To make it even better, there is masses of clover in it. With the reseed being late and then the really wet weather I was sure that I had wasted my time including clover in the seed mix.
We had talked about it all winter and agreed that we would never do a late reseed again. We might now have to come up with a different answer.
Battle
It is a reminder of just how extremely hard it is to know if you are doing the right thing or not. You can do everything by the book and then the weather messes things up.
But the thing about the weather is that it has a habit of evening itself out, so if we give things time, they usually get sorted.
My reseed is a good example of that, but the problem with my breeding heifers is that I have not got a lot of time to spare.
If they do not breed and hold in-calf by the end of June, then they have missed the boat.
I will do my best to give them every chance, but it is always a battle against the weather, and sometimes the weather wins.
SHARING OPTIONS