Farmer Focus: Maize harvest looking four weeks late

The silage I’ve been complaining about for three months has now gone.

It brought health problems, but also milk, which has now dropped 3.5 litres a cow a day on average since we moved onto second cut.

Cows are averaging 35 litres a day, although butterfat has lifted to 4.5%.

See also: Red tape pressure lifts Irish cow culling 10%

About the author

Tom Stable

Tom Stable and family, Ulverston, Cumbria, milk 300 Holsteins twice a day, producing milk for Arla and ice cream for their Cumbrian Cow brand. The 215ha operation, of which half is rented, grows grass, maize, and winter wheat. Cows average 10,800 litres.

Read more articles by Tom Stable

The summer has been quiet as far as calving heifers goes, although this ramps up again in October, which should help to improve milk quantity.

We aim to calve heifers consistently throughout the year, but that doesn’t always happen as well as I’d like.

We had harvested wheat and barley around the start of September. Barley did about 7.16t/ha and the wheat about 9.6t/ha, which we were pleased with for the season.

Straw came off well; however, the catchy weather meant we put about one third into round bales.

Although it is nice stuff, the hassle of carting 400 round bales will take me a while to recover from.

We’ve drilled grass on 16ha that we combined; after much debate around direct drilling, we lost our nerve and just ploughed it.

The rest of the wheat stubble is going into a mixture of cover crops and winter bird seed for a mixture of environmental schemes, which take some keeping track of.

Maize harvest is looking like the end of the month at the soonest. In the past, we’ve chopped in the first week in September, but this year has been far from ideal.

The window between maize chopping and wheat drilling is looking much smaller than normal, so we are getting some of that work out of the way.

This includes fifth-cut silage and emptying the sand out of the store.

We were a little short of drivers thanks to my decision to complete the task on Westmorland show day, but we still managed to empty it, although it was a very long day.

The Maize Maze and ice cream have closed again after another successful year. Thank you to everyone who makes it possible.

Thank you farm staff for setting up and their patience while we spin a few plates, and the 45 or so seasonal staff managed by my mum, Denise, and my wife Anna.