With the land really saturated, we have had to admit defeat on our autumn spraying plans.

It means the bulk of the cereals have had no autumn herbicide and no aphicide to control potential losses from barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV) on the winter barley.

It will be interesting, to put it at its mildest, to see what the difference is between the genetically resistant variety and our standard Cassia.

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I also regret that we haven’t been able to remove the volunteer beans from the seed wheat.

I am resigned to them growing alongside the wheat as the winter progresses and then going in at the first opportunity in the spring.

We have done that before but it’s more expensive than an autumn application and the bigger clumps of volunteer beans inevitably leave gaps in the crop.

We grazed the very last of the paddocks in conditions that were really too wet and the surface is poached and dirty looking.

However, it will be undisturbed between now and February and hopefully will recover fully, but it won’t be fit for early grazing.

We may have to reseed some of the worst affected areas but we will keep an eye on it.

The earlier stripped land has already got a good cover of grass on it with the reseeded ground well ahead of the permanent grass.

Obviously we have all the cattle in at this stage.

The latest ones to be housed put on absolutely no weight over the last month or six weeks.

It was too difficult to feed them at grass and they were effectively lawn mowers cleaning out paddocks so that they would be in good condition for grazing and production in 2026.

I was consoled that I wasn’t the only one with late grass to be eaten with a dairy farming friend saying he was expecting that there would be paddocks that he was not going to be able to reach.

However, one spin-off from the late grazing of growing cattle that we have noticed over the years is that they seem to have a type of compensatory growth when they go onto silage ad lib with barley, protein and minerals.

Normally, compensatory growth would be associated with stores going out onto spring grass.

I have seen little reference to it in the case of poorly performing, late-grazing cattle.

Meanwhile, with the cattle fully indoors, the silage rolled barley mix has attracted flocks of crows.

We bought one of those suspended, pretend hawks they have on some airport fields, but after an initial hesitation the birds realised that they weren’t going to come to any harm and that they could continue as before.

The best deterrent seems to be netting wire spanning the gap between the slatted sheds but it’s a difficult messy job getting it in place.

We also find tractors and the feeder parked in the passages puts the crows off.

Ideally a dog would stand guard and chase off any crows that appear but that’s a training feat that we have not mastered yet.