Over the past week, I’ve been speaking to people from the tip of Malin Head, east to Co Down and right down to Co Cork and everyone seems to be talking about the same subject - grass.

Or lack thereof.

Everyone seems to be under pressure and struggling to keep adequate amounts of grass in front of stock.

Many dairy farmers that I’m dealing with are buffer feeding silage at milking time and indeed I was speaking to one suckler and sheep farmer who was feeding some silage to his cows at grass.

Solace

I suppose there is some solace in knowing we are all in the same boat, not much, but some. Cold temperatures being the main culprit, that and plenty of rain thrown in for good measure.

I was speaking to a man a few weeks back and he was telling me that he was out driving on Christmas morning, heading to see what Santa had brought the grandchildren and it was 13°C according to the gauge in the car.

Most mornings over the past month have been somewhere between 6°C and 10°C. That’s December versus June - mad stuff Ted!

Anyway, I am happy to be able to say that at this moment in time I am not short of grass - not because I’m a great farmer or have some magic spell that I can use to make grass grow.

No, I have plenty of grass because I had quite a lot of stock housed for the month of June. I was starting to get tight for grass in the first week of June, I had plenty of silage made, so I thought I’ll put one batch of heifers into the shed for a few days just to take the pressure off and let me build a bit of grass.

Unfortunately, one batch quickly turned into two batches and a couple of days turned into a couple of weeks.

Three weeks

At this point, I was going on holiday for a week. The decision was made - just for ease of management for the person who was looking after things when I was away - to leave the cattle in the shed until I got back.

So, the original couple of days ended up being three weeks. Not ideal in the middle of the grazing season, but I was lucky enough to have had the silage to feed them and now am in the situation of having a bit of grass on the farm.

I now have a good bit of after-grass back in from first-cut silage, so I’m hopeful that growth will be able to meet demand for the rest of the season - of course, there is absolutely no guarantee of that.

It does really bring home the benefits of baling surplus grass when you can.

The bales I made from a strong paddock at the end of May easily fed the cattle I had house for the three weeks, with some still left over, and I was left with a nice fresh regrowth which I’m grazing now.

If I had continued to graze that field at the time, I might have got a week out of it by strip grazing. Regrowth would have been poor and to be honest, I’d say the difference in performance would be minimal enough.