I have never seen such growth and good ground conditions as this autumn.

I thought I was the only one cleaning off paddocks, but I had the opportunity to be on a few farms over the last week, including some progressive dairy farms, and all were taking advantage of the late autumn grass to keep stock out longer than usual.

Those in dairying have the advantage of a very good basic price of milk and the bonus of an extra constituent top-up so, despite the almost certainty of a superlevy, any dairy farmer I talk to is intent on getting every extra gallon out of his herd.

Back at home, one area that I have not been able to even consider grazing is the new grass sown around the 12 to 15 September. It has made excellent progress, but it will be well into next spring before it is able to take stock. I am presuming that the strong autumn growth left ungrazed will not come to any damage over the winter. While it’s not recommended to take a hay or silage cut, I do not want a strong inedible butt to develop so early in the sward’s life.

We are now bringing in the weanlings in dribs and drabs as areas get cleaned off and we have opened up the maize silage. We will get an analysis as soon as possible.

I intend to keep it for the final finishing period for the bulls and use the grass silage for the weanlings over the winter that will be going out to grass.

One of the extra costs with maize is the protein and mineral supplementation that is needed.

Soya has remained very expensive and with so much energy in diets this year, the logical thing is to feed urea as a Nitrogen sources. There is no doubt that it works, but the dangers of inadequate mixing are very real as I learned to my cost a few years ago.

The other option to using straight urea is to use Optigen, the slow-release product from Alltech, but ideally I would like to grow my own protein. I have one field left where I had spring barley last year – this can either go back into spring barley as I did this year, but I’d prefer to be able to incorporate beans into my own ration.

I have never grown a really satisfactory crop of beans, but it is some years since I tried last and I am told the technology has improved significantly.