I don’t have a topper or a mower on the farm and haven’t had one for almost 20 years, but if ever there was a year where I needed one, it’s this year.

When the rain came a few weeks back, grass just exploded, which left me with lots of heavy covers. I took out seven acres for bales, but unfortunately there was another five or six acres that probably should have been taken out as well but weren’t.

If I had baled everything I would have probably run out of grass, as the colder temperatures had slowed growth right back.

Unfortunately, the only way to try and graze this grass is by strip grazing it and even at that stock will never graze it out properly. Also, as it has been growing for a long time, it's white at the bottom and takes forever to come back after grazing.

Hopefully, I will get these paddocks grazed out better the next time around, but they will inevitably need to be topped at some stage or else a few bales will need to be taken of them to freshen thing up again.

Bargain hunting

I’m finding myself looking at disc mowers on DoneDeal again, which usually happens at this time of year.

I’ll start by looking at the cheap, side-mounted toppers, and then tell myself: "No, those things are no good, they batter the grass instead of cutting it and the regrowth is too slow."

Then I’ll move on the see if there’s anybody local or in Donegal selling an eight foot or above disc mower for handyish money, then I’ll say to myself: “No, sure you don’t know what a second-hand disc mower’s been doing, there could be a crack in the bed or a damaged cog, and sure them beds are a pure money pit if they start to go wrong!”

Then I’ll move on to looking at new disc mowers to see if anyone is doing the 0% finance again this year and I’ll inevitably say to myself: “Don’t be stupid, you can’t justify that kind of money to do a bit of topping, 0% finance or not!”

Result

I have then come full circle and ended back where I started, which means I’ll get someone else to do the bit of topping and once the fields have been topped and the nice fresh lush grass is growing, all notions of toppers and mowers are usually gone for another year.

Maybe some year I will actually buy something.

All grazing cattle received a white wormer and a mineral drench over the past couple of weeks.

No dung samples were taken this time, but cattle were starting to cough a little, so I just decided to give them a dose to be on the safe side.

Not the ideal thing to do from a resistance point of view, but better safe than sorry.