It’s over eight weeks since we had any decent drop of rain on Greenfield Kilkenny, so yesterday's 15mm was very welcome. About 15mm fell Friday on farm, and in fairness we did get 5mm last Friday (20 July), so all we need now is to keep another drop coming every day for the next week and grass might start to grow.

Met Éireann has some rain in the forecast for the coming days so here’s hoping it arrives.

The cows are getting little or nothing from grazed grass at the moment but David is moving them every second day to a new paddock. The diet remains the same as last weekend – 6 to 7kg Glanbia 16% nut, 4 to 5kg of beet pulp nuts and 6 to 8kg (dry matter) of first-cut silage – fed out twice a day along the boundary wire.

The beet pulp nuts are tipped up on the concrete apron in front of the first-cut silage with a black sheet of plastic over them. The list price of the beet pulp nuts is €248/t, while the list price of the Glanbia 16% nut is €282/t.

Someone asked me during the week where did we get the Ford 7840 and the old Keenan diet feeder. They are hired in from the farm's contractors and without them it would be very hard to manage.

I see plenty of tractors and spinners on the move this weekend – the drop of rain has every farmer in the country on the move with nitrogen.

Rightly or wrongly, the Greenfield farm hasn’t moved on nitrogen. Paddocks are so bare you’d like to see a bit more cover and moisture come and then let the nitrogen that’s sitting on the paddocks and released with the rain start moving before topping it up.

Milk solids have slipped in the week (volume, protein and fat) as the proportion of grazed grass in the diet is much less. While the first-cut grass silage is decent quality and preserved well, it is still not as good as grazed grass.

Greenfield cows waiting for evening feed July 2018.

The last milk test (26 July) shows a result of about 17kg per cow at 3.61%, down from 3.76%, and 4.60% fat down from 4.66%, so that is essentially 1.4kg MS/cow, at 198,000 SCC down from 284,000, 16 TBC and 4.78% lactose down from 4.85%.

This time last year, volume per cow was higher, supplement per cow was almost nil (grazed grass only) while protein was running at 3.90% and fat at 4.50%. What a difference a year makes.

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