Farmers in nitrate vulnerable zones (NVZs) are keeping a keen eye on the weather forecast as the deadline for slurry spreading rapidly approaches. Continuous rain in the south west has put some livestock farms in a precarious position. Ground is too wet to get tankers out and there are hundreds of acres of silage still in the fields.

But after Sunday 15 October it is illegal to spread slurry until 15 January at the earliest, depending on the NVZ.

“What we need is for the government to give us a derogation to be able to spread slurry during the closed period,” said NFUS vice-president Gary Mitchell.

“The land I have in NVZ has been closed since the end of August, which I was reasonably prepared for, but my neighbour estimates that he has just five days of storage left. The land is just waterlogged and I’ve got 400 acres of silage still to cut.”

However, it’s not just NVZs that are having trouble. Land in Ayrshire is also too wet to travel on.

“The winter will be horrendous, a lot of slurry stores are already sitting 50% full, as the cattle came in so much earlier,” said agricultural consultant Caroline Montgomery. “Past the end of this month it’s going to be hard to get it out, and it’s illegal to spread when it’s frosty too.”

At this stage, slurry should have been spread and winter crops sown, but the harvest is not yet finished either.

“We usually chop 1,000 acres for our own farm, but we were late for the first cut with the weather and have still got 350 acres of silage to do,” said beef, sheep, dairy farmer and contractor Andrew Welsh, who has an umbilical system to spread slurry.

“If we can’t get enough forage, we’ll sell off the store cattle and keep the silage for the dairy cows. Usually I would have sprayed 3,000 to 4,000 acres of crops in the last two months, but this year I’ve only done 100 acres.”