Farmer Focus: Non-stop rain brings cows in early
Steven Sandison © Ken Amer On one of the many wet days we have had recently, I was asked: “Is this why we got bumper crops of silage this year in Orkney?”
When lots of regions up and down the country had little or no grass during the summer and were burnt up, Orkney was one of the areas that had amazing grass growth.
It seems we are now paying the price. It’s now near the end of October and I’m pretty sure it has rained most days since early September.
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We started farming in 2003 and I think this is the earliest our cows have ever come in.
We have no straw baled yet and there are hundreds of acres still to bale in the county.
I know of a couple of farmers who haven’t got any crop cut yet.
The cows with heifer calves for replacements, along with the in-calf heifers, are still outside. All the sale calves are away and their mothers inside for the winter.
The steer calves have weighed 10kg heavier than last year, at 347kg on average, and made an average price of £810, which is a few pounds more than last year.
Earlier in the year, when costs were climbing, I was hoping the calves would be at least £100 up on the year, and that would go a good part of the way to cover the extra costs.
Sadly, this hasn’t happened, so we will have to cut our cloth to suit.
With the finished cattle price firming in recent weeks, I think it might have been wise to keep our calves a bit longer. We would have had room and silage to house them until calving starts in February.
But I can’t bring myself to buy lovely golden straw from Aberdeenshire at more than £100/t just to turn it into dung.
It was good to be back in Stirling at the bull sales. I’ve heard it said you should buy a bull when you see one, rather than leaving it until you need one.
I would be home with a few Salers bulls if I had played by that rule this time. But I was needing Simmentals and managed to buy a couple of nice dark red bulls.