We travelled up to the Rocky Mountains while in Canada. It was a seven-hour drive and it was a great way to see more of the landscape.

That drive really showed the vastness and scale of tillage farming out there. It was just fields and fields of wheat, barley and canola as far as the eye could see.

When we pulled out onto one highway, the sat nav said, “continue straight on this road for 275km”.

On the way back from the mountains, we stopped in where we saw three Case combines with 40 foot headers cutting canola in a 305ac field. The farm owner was on the chaser bin and I got to chat to him.

He is farming 4,500ac and that was his last field of the harvest, they have been cutting for two weeks. He said it was a poor harvest as they hadn’t enough rain during the growing season.

There is irrigation in areas, there just wasn’t with the farmers we stopped with. He said his yield was around 1.1t/ac for the canola. He also pays crop insurance each year to cover if the yield is below 0.8t/ac.

Profit

He told me profit would be around €100 to €200/ac. With the amount of acres they are farming, that multiplies up quickly.

From the small insight I got, it seems very hard for tillage farmers in Ireland to compete with that scale, as both places are receiving a similar price.

We also visited a mart and a feedlot. On average the cattle going through the ring were making €500/head more than they would here.

The main stock were 200-300kg Limousin and Angus steers. We didn’t get to talk to anyone at the feedlot, but they did allow us in to drive around it.

Again, from the small bit we saw, it is hard to see how beef farmers here could compete. There are no sheds, no slatted tanks, just a concrete trough for the feed and a six foot concrete apron for the cattle to stand on while eating, the rest of the pen is just clay.

Spotless

The cattle were spotless, in fairness, and were all in excellent condition and looked very comfortable. It wasn’t full when we were there, it can hold up to 26,000 head, but there was probably only half that there.

I am back home now after a great holiday, it was great to get the break away. We have a good few jobs on this week. The third cut will be baled, the cows are due the salmonella vaccine this week and the reseeded silage field is well up and I want to get it sprayed this week while it is dry.

I would like to give this another roll with the flat roller to firm it up and increase tillering, but I don’t want to roll it close to spraying, so I will leave it off for now as the spraying is more important.

We were not able to build grass cover, and it is well behind target. Average farm cover was 672 kg DM/ha last week, with growth at 64kg DM/ha up from a disappointingly low 40kg the week before.

With demand at 33kg DM/ha, I am hopeful cover will increase more when we measure this week.

But, at this stage I don’t see us being able to stop feeding silage for the rest of the year. Cows are milking 21l at 5.05% fat and 4.13% protein.