Silage: Excellent grass growth over the last two weeks has meant there has been surplus grass on most farms. This surplus has come at the right time, as it means farmers have an opportunity to take out stemmy or poor-quality paddocks for silage and help to clean up the grazing area.

Second-cut silage fields are bulking up well, especially where first-cuts were taken in early May.

It looks like there will be plenty of fodder made over the next six weeks. One issue some farmers will have is that they will have no place to put pit silage, as pits are full. If storing bales, they must only be stacked no more than two high where the effluent is not being gathered.

Having come through a couple of years where fodder was tight, the priority should be to conserve as much silage as possible this year.

Last winter was short, but the winter before seemed to go on for six months. There will also be opportunities to purchase silage on the stem or in a bale over the coming weeks.

If there is a lot of surplus silage being made, there could be value to be had building up reserves. Round bales of silage are likely to be €10 to €20/bale cheaper than the peak price in 2022/2023.

Profit: June, July and August should be the money-making months on dairy farms. Cows are milking well and costs are low, or at least they should be.

I suspect many farmers will be left with a sour taste from big meal bills this summer because many continue to feed 3kg or more of meal per day, despite plenty of grass around. The cow will eat it, but as we have pointed out in the past, she’ll only convert about half of it to extra milk.

I was talking to a farmer during the week who made the decision six weeks ago to only feed the minimum amount of meal that his feeders will give out, which he thought was 1.6kg per day or 0.8kg per feed.

He wanted to continue feeding some meal for cow flow purposes. When he back calculated how much meal he was feeding (number of tonnes fed, divided by days, divided by cow numbers) it turned out he was feeding 2.2kg per day.

It’s an expensive way of keeping cows moving. What he has since done is block off or disconnect from the steel rope every second feeder in the parlour. This means he is still feeding some meal, but a lot less than before.

Moorepark: One of the farming highlights for 2025 is the Moorepark open day taking place next Wednesday 2 July.

As outlined in the special Focus in this week’s paper, it’s a world class event pulling together all of the latest in dairy farming research. The event is a real opportunity for the sector to draw a line in the sand and look ahead to the next 10 years with optimism and enthusiasm.

A new addition to this year’s open day is a Business of Farming forum just after the main boards. There will be three topics discussed at this forum, future farm systems, managing costs and evaluating growth opportunities, and each session is repeated once. Farmers from Ireland, Scotland and New Zealand will be on the panels.