We started the last rotation of the year in exceptional conditions this week. Grass has been growing at a phenomenal rate for the last month and grass covers have jumped well ahead of budget. We have been grazing covers of over 2,000kg DM/ha for the last few weeks, with protein holding up at well over 4% for every collection in October so far.

We will persist with grazing the higher covers first, even though some farms switch to lighter covers now to get more acres closed sooner.

We will review this as we go along, but at the moment, with growth rates close to 70kg DM/ha per day, the heavy covers would go to over 3,000kg if we left them for another week or two.

Ground conditions over this side of the country have been excellent for the last week, with roadways drying out again, making it much easier to clean paddocks properly.

The last of the slurry will go out this week behind the cows. However, if the deadline is extended we will continue to spread the dairy washings behind the cows for whatever length of time we are given.

Excellent silage

Our maize silage arrived into the pit last week and looked excellent. We will test it in a few weeks to see what the numbers are like, but it looks like the best maize that we’ve ever put in a pit.

This crop has been grown locally for a number of years for us, by a tillage farming friend, without any effort or input on our part. There’s a fair amount of trust involved with both parties, and so far the arrangement has worked out well for both of us, with just a verbal agreement or handshake in place.

This maize pit will be opened when the cows start calving in the spring and will be fed through February and March to help stretch grass through the first rotation.

The stocking rate on the milking platform will be over 3.3 cows/ha next year, and with an early and compact calving date we will have a high demand for grass through the first few months of the year.

This maize should help us through that period. The maize has a cost of close to 60% of purchased concentrate although it does come with higher storage and feed-out costs.

Future

We had a few discussion groups through the farm over the last month as it’s that time of year when there’s a bit more downtime on the farm, allowing people a bit of time off.

It’s good to see a few younger faces in some of these groups as the age profile of farmers visiting seemed to have been creeping up over the last decade or so.

Dairying is definitely a young person’s game, so it’s vital to see these younger people getting involved in the industry.

Hopefully, a few more young people will see opportunities in agriculture over the next few decades.

There’s a lot of hardship with weather, price volatility, farm fragmentation and regulations, but there are a lot of positives in it as well.

Sometimes we are guilty of only portraying the negative aspects of our sector in the media, especially with budgets looming and assistance certainly needed in certain regions.

Maybe we should try to tell the other side of the story a little bit more often and promote our sector to future generations.