Rodney Down: Sunshine and 'sexy' wheat keeps us going

THE decision to apply urea to most of the dairy grazing has meant that in just over a week we went from an average cover of 1,800kg/ha (728kg/acre) DM to 2,400kg/ha (972kg/acre).

By the time you read this I am sure we will be struggling to keep on top of the grazing.

All things are in place for a real explosion! All cows are out and fingers crossed they hold production at 30 litres per day.

The poor girls were really settled but the two bills on my desk – for straw and soya – meant it wasn’t going to take many dry days before they were turned out!

Second wheats

All I seem to do at the moment is travel up and down a tramline with Atlantis applied across all the wheat, 125kg/ha (50kg/acre) of urea on all the first wheats and 185 kg/ha (75kg/acre) of AN on all the second wheats.

It will be straight back in with the T0 after that. It’s all a bit intensive at the moment.

The Italian ryegrass for silage will have a reduced amount of nitrogen this year as it only started utilising the first application in April.

Travelling up and down the fields gets me thinking, and I came to the conclusion that if it wasn’t for the brilliant sunshine and the rather sexy piece of wheat, one wonders how to be enthusiastic: The fuel the tractor is drinking goes up by the hour, the fertiliser coming out the back goes up by the week and the crop being fertilised (wheat) drops by the month.

It’s all OK though, as we can add value by feeding it to fatten our beef cattle, but that price seems to drop by the week, too.

Or we could feed it to the dairy cows which produce milk that’s worth less every six months. Could you ask all your friends to drink a glass of milk and eat a steak a day – every little helps.

Claire and I took on this farm and got married at the same time – I’m not going to say which was most stressful – but this week has seen a good friend do exactly the same. Congratulations to Ben and Tori Stanley – we wish you every bit of luck in both your new ventures together.

Have your say

Please do not complete the following form field for security reasons.

Name

E-mail

Comment

Post as

Anonymously

Display name