Farming Focus
IT IS the start of a new year, a time when it is customary to look back and take stock of what’s been happening over the past 12 months.
It will come as no surprise to any reader that one of the main features of 2015 was the weather - which can be summed up simply as wet, wet, wet. The total rainfall recorded at the Met Office weather station outside my office at Kirkton was 3,586 mm (141 inches) which was 1,058 mm more than the 1991-2010 20-year average. So there was not only a lot more rain than ‘normal’ but it was also incessant, with rain being recorded on 292 days throughout 2015. All this wet stuff had an impact on the running of the farms.
Following a wet January, we had a short respite during the first half of February, but the rain soon returned with a vengeance giving us a wet second half of February and a wet March. This made feeding the sheep challenging, and a muddy business. Fortunately, we then had a relatively dry, sunny and at times warm April, which was ideal for the beginning of lambing time. But again, after this May was cool and wet, as were June, July and August.
Although the animals did not suffer too much from these conditions, it played havoc with our day-to- day farming operations. Ploughing was one job which was abandoned altogether in favour of direct drilling, which allowed us to keep to our schedule of re-seeding at least one field each year. Just when I was debating whether or not to cut the grass for silage, we experienced a brief dry spell in the middle of August and we managed to get the grass cut and baled.
Thankfully after all the summer rain we had a bit of an Indian summer, and it was relatively warm and dry through September and early October. In fact, October 1 2015 was not only the warmest October day on record at 20 degrees Celsius, but was actually the first time that this temperature has ever been recorded in October. Like the rest of the country, November and December were very wet. In fact, the wettest month of 2015 was December, when a total of 738 mm (29 inches) of rainfall was recorded, making it the wettest December and the wettest calendar month since records began in 1991.
One of the few positives from these conditions was that the grass kept growing almost until Christmas, and no supplementary feeding was required until the new year. At pre-tupping, the ewes averaged 55 kg and were in good condition, which is good for the start of the mating season, and they were in much the same condition when the tups were removed in the first week of January. At this time, we dosed them for fluke and treated them for ticks. Last year, we had a couple of incidences of tick borne fever in our lambs so we have decided to take a ‘belt and braces’ approach to ticks this year.
As I have mentioned in a previous article, the weather was also the main reason for taking our cows down off the hill early and putting them inside. They should start calving in about three weeks and appear to be in just about the right condition. The sight and sound of a shed full of contented cows, lying down, chewing their cud as the rain hammers off the roof, is one that I find very enjoyable.
Last year, sleet or snow was recorded falling at the weather station on 42 days and lying snow was noted on 43 days. A depth of 20cm of lying snow was recorded on January 14 and 18cm on March 3.
As in the previous winter, we had snow on the mountains above 600m that lasted well into spring, with a few patches on some of the surrounding Munros not melting until August.
And it looks like we are on track for more snow in 2016.
But let’s hope we see a bit more sun and a lot less rain through 2016, particularly at key times during our farming calendar. For now though, I better grab my raincoat and leggings again.