Farmer Focus: Turnout gallops leave paddock poached

I had hoped to write this after cutting and clamping pre-maize first-cut and already be planning cultivations for maize, but the wet weather has me rethinking plans.

We haven’t had weather to dry the land enough to travel and make dry enough silage.

We didn’t want the silage coming to meet us at the front of the pit, which it often can do if it’s early and leafy and a bit low in dry matter.

See also: Farmers warned of lead poisoning risk with spring turnout

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

Hopefully, by the time this goes to print, I’ll have it snatched and safe under plastic.

Like most of the dairy farms I follow on social media, our cows went out recently and I’m sorry to report they poached the ground badly.

Fortunately, it was just an abused paddock close to the farm, not a good ley.

Cows don’t tread lightly at the best of times, but they are certainly heavy footed during their obligatory turnout gallops.

I have some grass seed ready and I’m waiting for a window to sward lift and overseed to try to mend it. We have spent most of April waiting for the weather to improve.

I treated Dad to a new scraper tractor recently. The Ford 2600 had worked hard for 10 years, but the link arms were more weld than original steel, the brakes were non-existent and it was getting unreliable.

The only problem is, a tractor that size tends to be a certain vintage and sitting in an enthusiast’s workshop, which limits what is available in the marketplace. 

I don’t know if I’m proud or ashamed to say Dad could be driving the scraper tractor with the lowest hours in Yorkshire. It arrived with 0.4 hours on the clock and at time of writing has 10.

I saw this week that the Climate Change Committee has been setting targets for livestock reduction to free up land for trees. It’s a bit of a scary time to be a farmer of any sort.

It amazes me how these groups target food production when there are planes in the sky and the Formula One industry is travelling around the world to race on tarmac.

Surely, if it really came down to it, food should come before travel and motorsport. Or am I missing something?