Second cut silage won’t be an option this year

was joined with them.

This is a sure sign of a slow start to the breeding season.

When I am out herding I carry a notebook in which I record the bulling dates of the cows.

After three weeks this gives an indication of how the bull is working and the number of repeats. This information is an added help for the scanning man later in the year.

Both the cows and the bull are in good condition without being over-fat.

The first calvers may be lacking some condition after the poor spring and have been under pressure for a while.

They will need good grazing for the rest of the summer.

I want to try and compact the calving as tight as possible and this is one reasons why the cows have been on very good grass for the past number of weeks.

There were five cows that I didn’t let off with the bull.

Three of these had poor quality calves and the other two have feet issues.

There is little point in keeping these poor performing cows when good heifers can be kept in their place.

After another month I will give them a few kgs of meal with the grass and fatten them while they are rearing the calves.

We eventually got to close 70 acres of silage in two splits. I decided to try and close as much first cut as possible. There is no silage reserve left in the yard.

Second cut is not an option as I think at this early stage the growing animals will need all the grass available to them later in the year. The 70 acres that are closed got very heavily grazed all spring so it will be a while before we have any silage to cut.

Next week I intend to do a spring clean of all the waste plastic on the farm.

There is the annual recycling collection of the plastic in our local mart at Portumna on June 7.

It is also a requirement for the Board Bia quality assurance scheme. This a great service as it keeps the farmyard tidy.

And as we have already contributed to the cost of the service by way of a levy on the new polythene, so we might as well make best use of it.

This year I have gone one step further as I had all the netting and empty spray drums bagged in the half ton bags.

This way it kept the netting clean and stopped it blowing around the farmyard. It is also a great way to dispose of the empty spray containers. I have the spray drums rinsed and placed in another half tonne bag.

Other options can be a lot more expensive and it is always interesting to see waste off a farm been recycled and used again for another purpose.

Another job on the list is weeds’ spraying. When the grass takes off, the weeds do as well.

I try to find a balancing act between the cost of spraying and how bad the field is.

At least we have our own sprayer so that reduces the cost a little.

This year I am using a product called PASTOR which is a wide spectrum grassland herbicide.

It gives good control where there is a mixture of docks, nettles and thistles in the sward and doesn’t seem to affect grass growth.