Michael Kemp, farmer and spraying contractor at Midbigging, Toab and Signy Spence

“We have 110 beef suckler cattle and are going down the Saler route at the minute. We sell our young cattle at about a year old and aim for them to be up at around 450kg. We are trying to wean out our later calvers.

“We also do about 3,000ac of spraying contracting every year. The weather has been fantastic, not been much rain, with the wind being the only issue at times. As it’s been drier, we’ve been careful to not scorch anything.

“We had fodder left from last year’s pit brimming this year before a second cut, which has been the first for a lot of years. We have arable oats still to be baled. We get a lot of bulk with that without it smothering the grass. We have about 40ac of barley and it’s looking good as we top dressed it and sprayed it twice. We’re not worried about straw ourselves this year as we are building another slatted tank.

“This is our first year on the agri-environment scheme. Some folk find the timings to be a hindrance but it’s actually worked well for us as it meant that we could get the slurry on early, which got the grass growing.”

David Scott, Grutha, South Ronaldsay, winner of Overall Cattle Champion and Champion of the Yard at this year’s Hope Show in St Margaret’s Hope Orkney

“Our silage has been mixed, our June silage was light with about six bales to the acre. First week of July was getting up to nine or 10 bales per acre. Hoping that the quality should be good because of the dryness of it.

“Even though there aren’t many bales it should be good. We’ve managed to make some hay this year which is good, but we are needing to do a second cut of silage as we will still be short.

“The barley went in a bit later, it’s looking ok, it has short straw on it but the rain has come at the right time to fill the heads of the barley out. I always buy in straw anyway but will probably have to buy in more this year, but will have to see what the price is like. We are pushing 50 cows, with a couple of followers and 10 sheep.”

John Hourie, Heathfield, St Ola

“We have 120 suckler cows at the bull and a bit over 1,000 ewes. The weather at the beginning of the year was a disaster. Before lambing we had absolutely no grass. Thankfully the grass started to grow once we were a few days into lambing. Our lambing started on 10 April. The first ewes were really struggling for milk.

“We grazed all the grass down with the ewes and it was slow to come back after that. We have finished making silage but would like to have had another few hundred bales. We have a few fields of toppings left that we could put in yet. We have 40ac of barley. It’s looking not too bad as we top dressed a couple of fields and it’s put a few inches on the straw.”

Ingram Stout, Whitehall Farm, Stronsay

Ingram has 250 cows and 250 ewes.

“For ourselves it has probably been too dry. The land that was grazed by the sheep in the spring was quite a bit lighter when it came for us to cut it for silage but the rest of the stuff that wasn’t grazed I would say has done quite well. We knew the pit was going to be quite a bit early so we decided to rent in another 50ac but we actually had plenty and ended up selling our last field of silage to someone who was short. The barley is going to be quite a bit earlier as it’s been a good summer and I would think that the straw will be shorter. The barley looks ok but the bulk of the straw looks less, and we are hoping to still have enough. We managed to get our barley in a peedie bit earlier than previous years.”