Rodney Down: Silage making goes well, but a recalculation on wheat isn’t so positive

Silage making was a breeze with none of us having to work late. This was partly due to the massive work rates we were achieving as a result of the reduced yields.

Italian rye-grass (a mix of Dynergo and Gemini) was only down 10 per cent, but all the medium and long-term leys were a massive 40 per cent lower than last year. Some 10,000 gallons an acre of dirty water, plus 130kg of N per hectare on the Italians, should rectify this by a good second cut, hopefully.

On the grazing platform, however, we seem to be growing plenty of grass with the cows averaging around 27, with the lowest level of buffer and concentrate we have ever fed.

This week will see us top the extra uneaten growth around the dung pats on the last grazing of each paddock in order to tidy things up.

Marketing and purchasing inputs have always interested me and I was suffering from that smug farmer syndrome having fixed wheat for September movement at £113/tonne ex-farm about 12 months ago. I watched the price fall and my grin rise.

Then last week, we updated our total costs on the arable fields and downgraded the yield potential, especially on the second wheats. We have lost tillers and some fields are a little too thin with smaller ears then usual.

So, the smile has now gone as it looks like another break-even year on cereal farming.

I was to be grounded by Claire and the kids if their broken television was not replaced this month, so a new one was hastily purchased and now all are happy, especially me as my favourite weather girl, the BBC’s Laura Tobin, can be seen in HD and she is even life size.

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