I thought I was seeing things during the last days of May when there seemed to be a definite lightening in a patch in the winter barley. It was where the soil was shallow on a slight slope in the field. It was in fact the first barley that was ripening – somewhat prematurely and due I would think to moisture stress, but within a few days all the winter barley on the place was beginning to turn.

How early is this ripening in the very early days of June? The earliest I ever began harvesting winter barley was 4 July in 1984. It was an excellent crop. Two years ago in the very warm dry year of 2018, we began two days later as far as I can remember on 6 July. Again, it was a very good crop with high bushel weights from the constant sunshine.

At this stage, the oats and beans look to be handling the weather well but cool moist conditions in the immediate future would help enormously if experience of recent years is anything to go by. But all the harvesting is still in the future.

We have now weighed the second batch of steers to go to the factory

The cattle are immediate. We have now weighed the second batch of steers to go to the factory. The variation in liveweight performance is extraordinary. The worst performing were those calves out of big specialist Holstein cows. We are aiming to get all cattle into a minimum fat score of 3-, but from constant weighing and recording feed intakes reasonably accurately, we seem for those dairy-type crosses to be losing €1/day – that is, the value of the daily gain is not nearly covering the cost of the final finishing stage.

Double the value

On the other hand, there are some comparatively well-conformed cattle, who seem to be out of a British Friesian-type cow, where the daily liveweight gain is worth double the value of the feed at that same stage of feeding and finish.

At this stage, we don’t have enough carcase weights to draw definite conclusions but the trends suggest that a radical change in my purchasing policy is necessary. Granted these are the first bullocks I have fattened in well over 20 years but some lessons are already being learned.