Farmer Focus: Do we thank contractors for harvest late finishes?
© Kathryn Mary Photography Normal service has resumed up here, with more rain in the past week than we have had in the past two months. It can stop anytime.
I’m glad we managed to get a second cut in when we did as there hasn’t been a weather window since. We decided to go again as grass was beginning to go to head with heat stress.
We were struggling in the heat too – you don’t realise how much you’ve come to rely on air conditioning in tractor cabs until it’s not working. Mowing second cut at temperatures in the mid-20s with the doors open is very old school.
See also: Why milk from forage may not be the best KPI for dairy herds
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As ever, we are indebted to our contractor, John Smith and Sons, and their Kilmaurs Mains team, for going above and beyond, working till 2am to get it all in before the weather broke.
I remember them saying once before that they don’t get thanks for working those hours, but I would just like to put it on record how much I appreciated it.
All this rain should hopefully wash in the slurry that was still sitting in dribble bar lines from first cut.
It has become apparent that when applied with the dribble bar, thicker slurry takes too long to be utilised and can kill the grass below.
It is a wonder no one has invented a faster slurry separator yet that can simply pump it out to the field quickly enough, negating the need for extra storage, or have I missed this?
Regrowths from silage fields and zero-grazed fields have been rapid, with both getting 50 and 30 units of nitrogen, respectively.
Cows continue to maintain condition and yield on primarily zero-grazed grass.
With grass quality at 85 digestibility value, 13.7MJ/kg metabolisable energy and 24% protein, the problem has been slowing the grass down through the cows, but cows, after all, are designed to eat grass.
We will continue to push intakes as aftermaths come into the rotation to see if we can keep the costs down through the summer.
We are about to start drying off a batch of cows and have another 30 heifers to calve shortly. I’m glad to be getting back to year-round calving and trying to maintain a level production profile.