Calendar farming: saturated soils and overflowing slurry tanks in Antrim

Antrim farmer Sam McElheran is in a dire predicament when it comes to slurry.

Milking 320 cows and keeping almost 700 cattle in all, the Ballymoney farmer has run out of slurry storage.

Appalling weather conditions since early summer have resulted in most of the farm being saturated since July.

“We zero-graze our farm and we had to put the zero grazer away at the end of July,” McElheran told the Irish Farmers Journal.

“We’ve been feeding them silage and a full winter ration since then.”

Slurry is coming up through the slats in some sheds.

With the herd locked up due to TB for the past 15 months, the Antrim man has a lot of extra mouths to feed on the farm.

However, fodder is, thankfully, not a problem.

“We forward-bought 250t of soya hulls and, with our silage, we should be ok now,” he said.

“We were lucky to get three very short windows for silage in mid-May, early July and on 10 August,” he explained. “A lot of men around here were not ready for that early silage and they are only getting their second-cut silage now.”

While some small amounts of slurry were spread immediately after each silage cut, weather conditions were in no way suitable to get tanks emptied before the 15 October deadline.

Now, despite having up to 1.4m gallons of slurry storage on his own farm and rented, all of McElheran’s tanks are full.

“Apparently we can spread after the deadline under the ‘reasonable excuse’ clause but it’s not like conditions have improved,” he pointed out. “The weather has not picked up at all.”

“We’ve given slurry away to good homes, we can ask neighbours to take slurry but who is going to take it around here? We are all in the same boat.”

We can ask neighbours to take slurry but who is going to take it around here?

He blasted the imposition of calendar farming.

“Before that was introduced, farmers were able to spread when conditions suited, no matter what time of year,” he said.

Sam McEleheran has 700 cattle housed and nowhere to spread slurry.

“Now you could go out on 1 February and spread when it’s lashing out of the heavens and no one would say anything to you. But you can’t go out and spread in perfect conditions on a dry winter day. It’s crazy,” he insisted.

“Farmers are better judges than any environmental body about when is the best time to spread. Slurry is worth money, we’re not going to waste it,” he maintained.

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