After a prolonged dry spell in May, the familiar rain has made its comeback, with showers now a regular feature most days. Thankfully, we managed to take full advantage of the fine spell in mid-May and got the first-cut of silage safely in the pit.

There’s always a certain relief that comes with having a good first-cut secured - it provides reassurance for the winter months ahead and takes a bit of pressure off when trying to harvest subsequent silage cuts. Following the first-cut, we made the decision not to apply slurry to any of the silage fields at the time as there was no rain in the forecast for at least a week after cutting.

However, once the rain returned, grass growth rebounded quickly and is now well on target for a second-cut at the end of June or early July. Fingers crossed we get a dry window around that time.

May’s dry spell did have a significant impact on growth rates on the grazing platform. We reached a point where growth had slowed so much that we had to buffer feed bales for five days.

This was done to avoid slipping into a grazing spiral and to maintain cow performance.

Fortunately, the weather broke at the end of May and growth surged. In fact, early June brought our highest growth rate of the season so far, reaching a daily rate of 138 kg dry matter per hectare.

Management

With grass growth recovering, we have started on some more intensive sward management.

Ideally, I’d prefer to pre-mow grass in front of the cows, but with the current heavy downpours, the conditions just haven’t been suitable.

Instead, we have begun topping some paddocks to hopefully maintain grass quality and reduce the amount of stemmy and rejected material in future rotations.

This week, for the first time in a while, the forecast is giving us two consecutive dry days, which is a rare luxury lately. We plan to take advantage of this short dry spell to bale around 10 acres of surplus grass at our out-farm.

This surplus is because we are carrying fewer heifers this year. These bales will hopefully come in useful for dry cows later in the season, before the main silage pit is opened over winter.

Yields

Milk yield dipped last week, most likely due to the persistent showers reducing the dry matter of grazed grass.

The cows have also been unsettled by the weather, often seen standing along ditches or sheltering instead of grazing.

However, yields have bounced back since then, particularly within the spring-calving group which is averaging 30 litres per cow.

The autumn group is back around two litres a cow over the past month, producing on average, 22 litres.

We’ll begin drying off the autumn cows at the start of August, so a gradual decline in yield from this group is expected in the coming weeks.

Although the season has been as unpredictable as ever, having a dry first-cut in the pit and strong grass growth so far this season has made this year feel much more manageable compared to the last few summers.