With much of New Zealand reporting very dry weather over the last two months, the rain that fell late last week and over the weekend has been very welcome for dairy farmers in the North Island.

Farmers measuring rainfall have reported between 40mm and 90mm of rain (almost 2in to 4in) over 48 hours.

For many farmers it was more rain than they recorded over the previous two months.

It has led some farmers to suggest they might actually get some sort of a second cut of silage while others suggested they might now actually be able to continue milking to the end of January at least.

Rainfall

New Zealand weather forecasters suggest there is the potential for a more active Tasman Sea bringing more rainfall than normal to much of the South Island and lower North Island over the coming week but a dry upper North Island will remain. This suggests the New Zealand drought is pretty much over.

Impact on Ireland

The implications for Ireland is that there may be some resurgence in New Zealand milk supply, which has fallen back dramatically over the last number of weeks.

It will take some time before we see exactly what the milk supply implications are. It seems the rain arrived just in time for many, and grass growth rates are likely to exceed 100kg per day in parts of New Zealand over the coming days.

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