Farmer Focus: Fortunate to have plentiful silage and straw

Back in June, I reported that we were trying to work out where to put our wholecrop, as the clamps were all full. In the space of a week, a great guy came in with a digger to level a 45x15m area and put stone in the floor.

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However, it’s been such a year for growing grass up here that we ended up baling all the third cut and using that area to stack them.

Then we decided the spring wheat was already too ripe for wholecrop, so that will be combined this week instead. 

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Colin Murdoch

Ayrshire farmer and zero grazer Colin Murdoch switched from Holsteins to milking 225 Jerseys in 2019. The 182ha farm grows 40ha of winter and spring barley for a total mixed ration and parlour fed system supplying Graham’s Family Dairy.

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I realise that those further south will be cursing me for writing this, but we’ll likely have cattle inside by October, when you’ll all be getting another flush of fresh grass till Christmas.

The combine was just pulling into the field for the winter barley when we returned, somewhat jet-lagged, from Canada.

It certainly wasn’t on my bingo card to jump straight into a tractor, but it was great to see the crop yielding so well – for south-west Scotland, anyway – at 11.2t/ha. The fields have just been limed and reseeded in ideal conditions.

Winter wheat is also safely in the shed, but as we’re currently about halfway through treating the grain with caustic soda, I haven’t got the final yield.

The grains are on the small side, though, hence the decision to treat it.

I think this can be put down to conditions being so dry early on, and then really wet for a month when grain would have been filling.

The straw yields are pleasing and, after a soaking the day after combining, we managed to get the baling done this week in near-30C heat, with the dust flying.

Black smoke was pouring from the classic Ford TW on the baler – not one for the climate crisis mob.

Like many up and down the country, our cows were a bit unsettled in the recent heat, and are happier now as temperatures ease back.

Intakes dropped by about 1kg dry matter/day but have returned to normal. It was actually cooler in their shed than outside in the sun, but I still wonder if we should have fans installed.

The opening of the Future Farming Investment grant scheme has certainly made them easier to justify, but we’ll have a wait to see if we’ve been successful.