Grass supplies on the farm are on a bit of a knife edge at the minute, with two fields out for reseeding and no after grass back in just yet.

With a bit of luck, I’ll have a field of after grass ready for grazing in the next week to ten days that will hopefully take the pressure off.

One of the fields earmarked for reseeding is already burned off and ploughed and will hopefully be sowed this week, weather permitting. The other has just been grazed off last Thursday and hasn’t been burned yet.

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The cautious part of me wants to fertilise this field and graze it again, as grass is tight at the minute. But the practical side of me is saying get it burned off and sowed as soon as possible.

I don’t intend to plough this field, just burn it off, subsoil it, lime, fertilise and stitch in the grass.

Reseeding

I’m not a huge fan of reseeding after 15 August as it can be quite hit and miss due to shorter days, colder temperatures, etc – so if I want it completed before then I really need to get cracking.

The field of after grass that will soon be ready for grazing is a field that is away from the yard and hasn’t been grazed with cattle for almost five years. Due to its location, I’ve been cutting silage off it for years.

Two cuts of silage then it would have been grazed with weanling heifers for a couple of months in the back end of the year.

But since it’s been sowed with red clover for the past number of years, I’ve been taking three cuts of silage off it, then grazing store lambs on it up until Christmas.

The field is well enough fenced for livestock, but the main problem is that there is no pen in the field to allow any kind of handling or easy loading.

Grazing

When we grazed weanling heifers down there, I’d make up a makeshift pen with gates and trailers and plenty of baler twine and feed the stock in the pen for a few weeks before I knew I’d be taking them home.

Which always worked quite well, but as anyone who has ever worked with livestock knows, it only takes one slightly nervous one to drive the rest mad. And if one decides to try to jump out then they are all gone and gathering them up the next time may not be as simple.

So, the plan is to get my fencing contractor to make me a proper pen this year before I need to load anything.

Nothing too fancy, just a few bits of telegraph poles, some crash barriers, a bit of sheep and barb wire and a couple of 16ft gates and I think I’ll have something fairly durable and fit for purpose and will leave grazing the field more accessible.