Farmer Focus: Maize survives drought but not local kids

Reseeding heavy land at the end of a drought presented several challenges in early September.

The biggest issue I had was keeping the engine breathing while power harrowing. Every two or three hours there would be an irritating “ding” and the air intake warning light would flash.

The filter would need removing and I’d have to knock the dust out, replace it, and then we would be good for another couple of hours.

See also: Maize Watch 2022: Maize cobs filling out

About the author

Tom Hildreth

Livestock Farmer Focus writer Tom Hildreth and family grow grass and maize for the 130-cow herd of genomically tested 11,000-litre Holsteins near York supplying Arla. The Hildreths run a café, ice cream business and milk vending machine on the farm.

Read more articles by Tom Hildreth

Another issue was the wind direction, which caused visibility issues.

I’ve never before had to guess where I should be driving because of the cloud of dust surrounding the tractor, but there’s a first for everything.

I even had to have the intermittent wipers on as dust was settling on the windscreen.

Land preparation aside, the actual sowing of the grass seeds went as well as it could have done with my home-built, front-mounted, 6m broadcaster, which uses an Air 8 seeder from Opico.

Rollers on the back of the tractor ensure excellent seed-to-soil contact and save a pass.

Not an hour after I’d finished sowing, we got 12mm of rain. Within a week the fields were starting to green over and they haven’t stopped growing since.

I can’t imagine I’ll be that lucky many times in my farming career.

By the time this goes to print we will have harvested the maize, but right now all but a couple of acres are stood in the field.

The little bit of maize that isn’t stood has been paddled into the ground by local kids.

I imagine they got bored of computer games towards the end of the summer holidays and decided to go and make tracks and loops in the maize field, oblivious to the fact that time, money, diesel and metal are invested in a high-value feed crop.

I opened the main grass clamp this week, having just run out of third cut. I always get a little bit giddy when we change a forage in the diet.

Seeing how the yield and solids are affected by the change is interesting. Since I opened the clamp, butter fat has lifted 0.2%, but average yield has stayed at 35 litres.