Many of our UK dairy farms are investing in technology

Here we are in May, it is already warmer and hopefully we are now on a better path to a growing season where we can all get on and catch-up with everything. Early Italian Ryegrass silage was made in late April where conditions allowed and everyone else will be looking to cut their grass silage in good conditions well before the end of this month.

It needs to improve however as we had storms with heavy rainfall last week again, and there are plenty of soft spots in the fields to catch out the unwary.

I have (with others on the farm), thrown tens of thousands of old tyres onto the silage sheets on our silage clamps over the years, the most appalling job given that they always had some smelly dirty water in them; only to take them off again over the winter (usually in the rain).

We were always looking for alternatives, but having seen other farmers experiment with alternative methods, nothing else came close to sealing a clamp at that time.

We did of course later invest in the heavy sheets and the sausage sand bags, but they were not without their issues either in terms of handling in the winter if you were on your own, or at weekends and so on.

To add to the misery, we often put second-cut grass silage on top of the first-cut, and that meant we needed to completely uncover the clamp, put the second-cut on top and sheet it all up again, throwing all the tyres/gravel bags back on.

I am therefore fascinated to see that the Dutch (always the first to mechanise anything) have now developed a powered clamp cover on rollers.

The Dutch have always been the best at silage making, high quality, no waste, and the tidiest clamps you have ever seen.

Suddenly it seems that the filthy job of covering and uncovering a silage clamp can now be done at the press of a button!

This new powered system relies on a gantry arrangement, with the auto-rollers un-winding the sheets over the clamp in one go.

More to the point, they unroll the clingfilm layer, the plastic sheet layer, and the heavy sheet on top, all at once.

They have either electric motors or petrol engines powering the rollers which run along tracks fixed on top of the silage clamp walls.

The system is wheeled out of the way whilst the clamp is filled and although the capital cost is high, labour saving over say 10 years more than pays for it according to Dutch farmers.

We can never hope to match grass silage quality made in the Netherlands, due to the better drying conditions in mainland Europe.

We have seen Dutch dairy farmers over here who could not emulate the quality they made in the Netherlands either. That disadvantage is minimised in Sussex these days due to maize silage being a large part of a dairy cow’s diet and we can match the quality of maize silage.

The other reason I expect the Dutch have pushed hard to come up with silage clamp sheeting solutions, is that it is not uncommon for them to put

1st and 2nd cut grass on top of each other, but then whole-crop silage on top of that and then maize silage, making what is referred to as a lasagne!

This means taking the sheets on and off multiple times during the spring, summer, and autumn; makes me sweat just thinking about that.

It is true that dairy farms in the Netherlands are smaller with the average dairy herd size less than half our av: herd size with smaller clamps as a result.

However, with most things automated, from milking the cows, to feeding and bedding the cows, scraping the slurry, pushing up the feed, mostly by robots and other mechanical devices, there is very little labour if any on most dairy farms in the Netherlands.

The capital costs on their dairy farms have always been way above ours, but then many of them have jobs off the farm; a completely different approach.

Many of our dairy farms are also investing in technology and I look forward to seeing the first silage clamp sheeted by a press of the button in the UK.

Bird flu (HN51) had spread to cattle in the USA and Defra are monitoring the situation over there with interest. It was first identified in March, but thought to have been spreading unidentified for some weeks before then.

US Department of Agriculture are testing, and the results and data is shared with the UK, as officials search for the origin of the outbreak in the USA.

There are no outbreaks in Europe and therefore Defra insist that there is no reason to test here at this stage, but would of course start testing should there be an outbreak in Europe.

It is unclear how this virus first jumped to cattle, but many suspect wild birds as the likely cause. The worry is that the virus could further mutate and infect humans, but the WHO considers the risk to humans to be low.

The UK Food Standards Agency is also advising that avian influenza poses a very low food safety risk for consumers.

Climate change and net zero continues to catch out those who over-reach and are simply playing with imaginary or fantasy targets.

Humza Yousaf, First Minister of Scotland is the latest to fall as the Climate Change Committee looked at the plans in Scotland and were brutal in their findings.

This prompted Yousaf to scrap the targets which immediately caused problems with the coalition the SNP had with the Green Party.

His next move was to abandon the Green Party which proved fatal for him, and he is leader no more.

Nicola Sturgeon was of course the one who took the Green Party with her into government, and it was she who set these targets, and whatever one thinks of the Climate Change Committee, they do call out green nonsense from any government and indeed they had already done so in England, prompting the Prime Minister to abandon them here.

Humza Yousaf was in all sorts of other trouble, and was not held in high regard, but Sturgeon’s ‘Westminster plus’ approach to climate was the final nail in his coffin.

Chris Packham is leading the charge against Bulmers Cider, who are grubbing out orchards in South Wales due to falling demand for its cider market, also due to improved growing practices.

The National association of Cider Makers say that 2,000 acres of apple orchards have been lost in the last few years.

There were very many apple orchards in the Plaistow and Kirdford area when we came here in 1979, but they are all long gone now.

Markets, imports and competition from New Zealand and Europe did for them and the land is now down to pasture.

The world moves on, and trees are planted whilst sometimes other trees are grubbed out; its not a crime.

But of course it is to the fanatics, they have the luxury of a single issue where nothing else matters, whereas the rest of us need to have balance, priorities, and a wider perspective.