Farmer Focus: Maize safely in after dodging scrap metal

Early November saw the last of the land work finished, with the last 5ha (12 acres) of wheat drilled on 3 November.

The rest of the maize came off early October, averaging 40t/ha (16t/acre) freshweight with little drama other than 5ha (12 acres) that back onto a housing estate.

This area is a minor problem for us – the kids see the maize as a playground. As I’m writing this, I’m getting a bit of deja-vu (I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before).

See also: Maize Watch: Crop progress a month behind

About the author

Tom Hildreth

Livestock Farmer Focus writer Tom Hildreth and family grow grass and maize for the 130-cow herd of genomically tested 11,000-litre Holsteins near York supplying Arla. The Hildreths run a café, ice cream business and milk vending machine on the farm.

Read more articles by Tom Hildreth

A couple of years ago, all the kids did was flatten an acre or two.

This time, besides flattening the crop, they left branches, towels, and cans, and when the metal detector on the chopper went off, I was surprised to pull out a kids’ pram from the header.

Fortunately, Dad has been using his powers of persuasion to get the council to fence them out. I have a feeling we will find the fence in a forager header next back-end.

The cows have been inside since the mid-September wet spell and milk yield has continued to climb since I ran out of wholecrop and started on maize.

They are currently yielding 35 litres a cow a day, and I am just in the process of fine-tuning the rape meal going through the mixer.

Alongside the 25kg of first and third cut, and the same amount of maize, the cows are getting 3.6kg of rape meal, as well as salt and minerals.

I’ll spend the next month or so increasing rape meal and measuring the yield response to maximise production, and then stick with that balance for the rest of the year.

The cows also have access to out-of-parlour feeders, where they can get up to 12kg of 16% cake fed according to yield. Thanks to funding from the Rural Payments Agency,

I will be retiring these and the milking parlour and replacing them with three robots.

This is something I have been interested in since I was at college and have been number crunching for 10 years or so.

I have just started this building project so apologies in advance if my next few columns are me banging on about it.