An upside-down year takes another twist with stop-start conditions for the harvest

It has certainly been an upside-down year, weather-wise. In May, we had ideal harvest conditions. Now, when we want to do the harvest, we’ve got exceptional growing conditions, with large volumes of rain accompanied with high humidity and very little drying.

As a result, the harvest has been more ‘stop’ than ‘start’. Also, as feared, yields have been poor. Our worst field of winter barley came in at 2.5t per acre, with the best one hitting 3.8t.

A lot of the straw is still to be baled. Not only that, the yield is very poor back by 60pc in some cases and of poor quality.

We may just have to be patient and leave the straw sit where it is until such time as the weather improves again, as the straw certainly won’t take any turning.

Our winter wheat is not ripe yet and it is our intention to put it into the silage pit as alkalage, to feed to the young bulls. Our winter oats is standing and ripe, but is okay for the moment.

However, our oilseed rape needs to be harvested at the first opportunity.

In our winter barley field with the worst yields, soil samples we took last year indicate that it is low in potassium (K). That is something that will have to be addressed for the coming season. It seems to me that if there was any area that was a little bit out of kilter, the crop really struggled as a consequence.

A couple of fields that we sowed in less than ideal conditions were on the back foot from the very start and never got a chance to catch up.

Traditionally, we always tried to start sowing our winter cereals from around September 20. But, in the last couple of years, that has been pushed back to the middle of October.

The main reason for that has to do with the banning of the seed dressing, Redigo Deter, that aids in the prevention of barley yellow dwarf virus. By pushing back the sowing date, the aphids that spread the virus tend to be less active.

Meanwhile, other countries in the EU continue to benefit from the availability of Redigo Deter through a derogation that Ireland didn’t seek.

So we are caught between a rock and a hard place – do we sow in September in good conditions and run the risk of the crop being infected by BYDV, or delay sowing and encounter much poorer seedbed conditions?

Meanwhile, the new calving season is well underway, with about 30pc calved.

There have been no major issues to date.

But the incessant rain has meant that our calving paddock has got very mucky, which makes the job of moving young calves very messy.

Also, from a safety point of view, we always bring the jeep out into the paddock when checking a cow. Now, even with 4WD, it’s difficult to move around the field. This happened again a few years ago and we ended up having to use the tractor, which really makes for a mess.

We have a single-strand electric fence on three sides of this paddock, with the wire slightly higher than normal, for just these conditions.

Any fresh calves are able to lie on the fresh clean ground under the electric wire and the cow is able to see and smell them, so at least the calves are not lying in the muck.

But any calves born during the day are moved out of the paddock in the evening.

One thing we are doing slightly differently this year is, within two or three days of birth, moving the cows and calves away to pasture, in groups of no more than 20 cows and their calves.

We hope to keep them in those groups until the start of the breeding season, when we will double up some of the groups.

We have two reasons for adopting this approach: if a cow or calf needs to be brought in, it’s much easier to bring in a small group, but the main reason is to streamline our vaccination programme.

When a group of calves is about three weeks old, we will bring them back in to give them their first shot of IBR-live vaccine intra-nasally. At this time, they will also get their first shot of Bovipast RSP.

A month later, we will be able to bring these calves back in and give them their booster shot of Bovipast.

The cows are now well settled into their evening time feeding regime.

Late on Friday evening before the Bank Holiday Monday, half-way through feeding, a chain broke on our feeder wagon.

I rang Keenans, and got through to the on-duty person in the service section. He said he would get someone out to me as soon as he could.

Less than two hours later, Martin was driving out of the yard with the problem sorted. Service like that is invaluable to farmers.

As feared, yields have been poor. Our worst field of winter barley came in at 2.5t/acre with the best one hitting 3.8t