As we finished Ai’ing the cows we put the Hereford bulls in to serve the cows for another 4/5 weeks and the daily workload shifts focus on to other areas of the farm.

We have done a third cut of silage and now have two full clamps filled, very much the same position of 2018 in June. This is the only similarity of 2018/2019 in 2018 we silaged late May then early June, we could feel the grass growth starting to slow as the onset of the drought started. We opened the clamp up on the 25th June 18 and started buffer feeding the cows twice a day (for which felt like an eternity). 2019 is a total different beast so far in June, we have had 133mm of rain which has been awesome, our average monthly growth rate per day is 73kgs dm/ha compared to 31kgs dm/ha in 2018.

We have grazed the 12ha reseed which was sown in May and watched the cows respond to the new seeds with the extra white stuff in the tank.

We have purchased a 2k gallon Hi Spec slurry tanker which will give us opportunity to follow the cows as paddocks are grazed, rather than just using contractors with umbilical slurry system.

Cows

The cows have been milking very well doing over 2kg milksolids per day and we continue to feed 2kgs of 14% cake within the parlour. During the very wet period for 5 days we put in an extra 1 kgs of cake to help the cows get the fill they needed whilst grazing wet low dry matter grass. We have 44 summer calvers that start to calve in July.

Grass

We continue to follow the cows with an application of blend putting on 20kgs Nitrogen per ha. During some of the heavy rain we grazed poorly when we had 75mm of rain in 4 days, paddocks that were grazed with a higher post residual would be grazed with a lower cover next round or be silaged to reset the residual. We have grown 8.43 tonnes/ha to date (17/7) which compared to the whole of 2018 of 9.98 tonnes/ha. Our average tonnes/ha grown over 5 years is 12.02 t/ha, which is 2014 -2018 seasons.

We have an average farm cover of 2446 and the growth rate has slowed to 34kgs dm/ha, not to panic as we have 160 ha to graze and we are stocked at a sensible 2.5 cows to hectare and some really good quality grass to go at.

We cut 160 acres on July 3rd and half filled the third clamp, very much a large area covered but lower covers to make sure we have quality for the cows to graze, we have had a bit more rain and weather looks inclement for the next 24hrs so fingers crossed that we get a bit more.

Calves

All calves are at grass with 81 weaned and wormed / vecoxanned and weighed on the 2nd July with an average weight of 136kgs. We have 80 Hereford calves that are at grass and being fed 1kgs of cake and also 21 March born heifers with them also. Due to TB we have had to keep the April born Herefords.

2018 vs 2019

2018 was a tough year for farmers in all sectors, especially livestock farmers and more so with grass based systems, the pressure and stress it put on everyone through the prolonged drought period was immense. It felt like we never stopped feeding, you never appreciate a simple system fully till you have to complicate it on a daily basis. It was mentally tiring and depressing and its taken some time to get my mojo back to be honest and I am a very very positive person who is a cup half full guy. It makes you question things and understand your stocking rate situation and makes you ask yourselves are you walking the line and are you being a busy fool, just remember you must farm to your farm and the ultimate goal is happiness in the end, is it necessary to put the system and everyone under more pressure for marginal gains. My answer is no, but its each to there own and what drives you may be different to my views.

We can look back on 2018 as a one in 40 year phenomenon or we plan for it more often by having an insurance policy in place with feed in the bank, but we have to appreciate the cost in doing so and its down to the individual business to either be risky or risk adverse, I know where I stand. I think we had a lucky winter after the 2018 drought, all cows out in February and a easy grassy spring which we have never looked back from really, only trying to look into the crystal ball to see if there would be in sting in the tail in June / July or it may still come?

I have never felt so much like the ants in Aesop’s fable this year, with thinking about filling those clamps to cover our insurance policy for winter or if we needed to feed out sooner. #dontbeagrasshopper

The moral of the story is that if you want to succeed tomorrow, you have to start working today. Those who do not plan for the long term will not succeed in the long term.

Its been a perfect year so far, so I hope it continues for all as we head towards August and start thinking ” where has 2019 gone already?”

As we commence this grazing season we come into unfamiliar territory of being able to turn the cows out to grass from the 3rd Feb! “Yes” I hear you say all spring calvers turn out there cows in February. But the reality of being able to turn your cows out on the 3rd February and then graze for am/pm without bringing them in at night by the 12th of February is not common place.

Only once previously about 5 years ago did we achieve this and we on/off grazed later in that month. Simply Wow!! Enjoy it!!

When turning the cows out we have to setup our Spring rotation planner, the “Srp” is the blue print to get us to the second round on time and making sure we have enough grass available for the second round.

You populate it with your relevant farm information and the “Srp” will give you a set area to graze on a daily basis. We have some simple targets 30% grazed by end February / 66% grazed by 16th March / then the second round starts 5th/8th April (for us). Magic day comes at 8th/10th April, this quiet simply were the grass grows quicker than the demand of the herd on a daily basis.

Every week we platemeter the farm and all the data is inputted into Agrinet, then we will see if we need to increase or decrease the area we’re grazing to achieve the weekly % grazed targets, if we want to decrease the area we have to graze higher covers of grass and vice versa graze lower covers if we want to increase the area. The key is to achieve very good residuals which we target 1500 kgdm/ha left on the paddock when the exit the set area.

With a very good farm average grass cover of 2300 we have unbelievably been able to turn a number of dry cows and Youngstock out on the 14th February, which is unheard of.

As we head into the weekend of 23rd February (2018 the weekend of The Beast from the East) we have reports of temps hitting 18 degrees! #dustingofftheshorts

We have applied a application of Dap across the whole farm on the 15th February which will help get things going, but the key thing is to get this grass grazed off.

We have done alot of farm improvements over the winter, new cubicles, new calving yard which have really made things more efficient. We have also installed calving cameras that are a great investment!!

So let’s enjoy the smaller work load than normal for this time of year with less tractor work and focus on the cows and the grass. The positivity is up and we will be enjoying the end of the month soon, we will hope for a great March but most importantly we will keep having fun!!