Last week, I was extremely fortunate to attend Royal Welsh Show at Builth Wells.

For me, this is one of the best shows in Britain and this year was no exception.

The show has great support from the agricultural community and has resisted the temptation to go down the road which many shows have been tempted to travel in pandering to town people.

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The parade of the section D Welsh Cobb stallions was outstanding and of the 20 presented, any one of 10 could’ve made first place. The cheers and screams from the grandstand as each one was enthusiastically and energetically trotted past during the individual display had to be heard to be believed.

Similarly, when the hounds were paraded each day, the enthusiasm with which hundreds of children flew into the arena to see the hounds, the excitement which surrounded the pony club games, the first day international teams, the second day with British pony clubs, who have their roots in individual hunts, followed by every popular hunt team relay chase.

It makes you wonder why trail hunting is likely to be banned with this sort of enthusiasm and support.

Last year when attending the Royal Welsh, our fields were brown and burnt up, but Wales was still green with excessive grass growth.

During last winter, silage could be hauled out of Wales at £90/t; this year, Wales is the same as here – brown, the only green bits are the bracken on the hills and the maize in the valleys and that itself was very variable. There will be no silage coming out of Wales this year at £90/t.

Winter feed

As well as being short for winter feed, we are already feeding all stock for winter rations. The cows are receiving a mix of grass silage, maize silage, brewers grains and Trafford Gold.

Mixing and putting this in the mangers can take up to two and a half hours a day, which has led me to consider the merits of a mixer wagon, something to which I thought would never happen since I really want to produce milk from grass.

We have been offered 600t of silage in a clamp 10 miles away for £55/t. I’m seriously thinking about it, as we are shut up with TB and if we fail our next test, we can’t sell our 25 in-calf heifers, which may be a good thing since I rate them the best we have ever produced.

Going forward, I think we have to farm within the constraints of these extreme weather conditions, with periods of constant flooding and periods of excessive heat stress in both cow and man and, more importantly, grass production.

We have just bought 50 adjacent acres and have a grant to create a lake. I’m trying to encourage my son-in-law to build a lake three times bigger than he imagines, because I say in future years, you will be selling water in the summertime to your neighbours for irrigation.

So now we’re off to the Dublin Horse Show this week, where hopefully we will see Irish Draughts comparable to the standard of the Welsh Cobb.