Farmer Focus: Fixing blend price offers some peace of mind

Wow, what a month it has been. I don’t think any of us expected the ramifications of the coronavirus to be as severe as they have been, especially going into lockdown for all non-essential workers.

We have been trying to cover our business as much as possible with the likely disruption coming along the road.

We fixed our main blend price for 12 months the day before the soya price jumped up. Although the price has since eased I am still very happy to have it fixed.

In the past 10 days we have got all our fertiliser finished as well as the slurry across all silage ground and a substantial part of the pasture ground as well.

See also: Advice on using the most effective dairy fertility KPIs

We have opted for liquid ammonia sulphate again this year, with the sulphur at 8%. We have had brilliant results with this over the past couple of years and it has helped reduce our overall fertiliser costs as well.

The calves seem to be doing very well at the moment, which is down to one member of the team, along with my Mum. They both have a lot of pride in the calves looking good and growing well, which is showing in their performance.

The weather has certainly helped with the calf performance, with less humidity in the air, meaning less pneumonia. We have also started intranasal vaccine for the calves before they move to the automatic feeder.

As I write this, we are 12 days from the start of lambing and the triplets and twins are looking in good condition.

They are just about to be split into their lambing fields. We would normally do this a week earlier, but we are waiting for some grass to grow.

We will gather the singles in the coming days to let them have a few days to settle before they start lambing.

I hope everyone is taking precautions around the virus and looking after vulnerable family members. And a big thank you to the health services for looking after people affected. We would be lost without them.