The rain has come at last. Gentle, intermittent ,sometimes heavy, but not the torrential thunderstorms that crash down and run straight off and which don't do a lot of good because it’s like pouring water quickly into a bottle - the air must come out first before the rain can penetrate.

So now we have warm ground; hopefully we will get some autumn growth for grazing, maybe some conserved and some for early grazing next year.

I see this as unlikely, so just in case, we have bought a clamp of silage because, as I keep telling the next generation, you can’t afford to gamble if you can’t afford to lose.

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Bluetongue

Last year, we sat quietly being regularly updated by the agriculture ministry on how bluetongue was moving up from the south as far as Hampshire, the adjoining county to the south.

This year, it appears to be travelling down from the north, but the most outbreaks are travelling up with a vengeance from Cornwall.

Farmers down there are vaccinating like mad and complaining about availability of vaccines and also the vets seem to be capitalising financially on the demand.

Our own vets are currently supplying at virtually cost of supply since they realise the importance, but, on discussing it with a neighbour, he said considering the price of fodder for this winter, is there any point in keeping the cattle alive if you can’t afford to feed them having spent all your money on vaccines?

We get a monthly Animal and Plant Agency update on bluetongue, which I find slightly confusing, so I will quote in full:

"The total number of BTV-3 cases that have been confirmed in the 2026-2027 bluetongue season, since 1 July 2026, is 684 (as of 28 August 2026).

  • 610 cases of bluetongue in England.
  • 61 cases if bluetongue in Wales.
  • 13 cases in Scotland.
  • No cases in Northern Ireland.

    • This leads me to think that so far, Éire is free of cases. We are keeping our fingers crossed a bit, but being warned that this year's midge season may be prolonged and even reach December if the weather is mild.

    There are only two cases in Wiltshire so far, but there are more under investigation. Maybe it's a gamble we shouldn’t take, but finances are currently stretched with the cost of silage, low milk prices and the long drought.

    World trade

    It’s quite unnerving that a sabre-rattling Mr Trump is having such effect on world trade.

    I just see Canadian cattle prices have jumped. In America, day-old dairy calves are approaching £1,000, but this can all change very rapidly.

    Years ago, I went to Canada and was very impressed with the country. Mainly family farms milking cows, third generation immigrants from Holland, Germany, Sweden, etc.

    They had borrowed 100% to buy the farm and just paid the interest, letting inflation take care of the rest. It seemed like every piece of machinery had a brand-new John Deere tractor attached.

    They had a very good quota system. I was told this was because they couldn’t export into America, so they just produced for the home market.

    With the quota being set at home consumption level, they took the cost of production of 100 farmers and chose two in the middle and added on a profit and away they went.

    Although it did mean that quota in Canada is very, very expensive.

    In this country, when we introduced quotas, we reduced the milk supply by 20%, but this was not enough to satisfy only the market available, therefore we had the worst of both worlds.

    We lost 20% of income and we still didn’t get a better milk price.