Farmer Focus: Our arable silage makes a good forage
Joe Mault © Richard Stanton Lambing has finished and it has been a good year. The weather has played its part with plenty of sunshine.
However, I’m sure many will agree we are now desperate for rain.
We had some short, sharp outbursts with thundershowers, but with the ground so dry, this made little difference and the majority just ran off our hilly ground.
See also: How a dairy farm has benefited from lupicaleage
Our south-facing hills are now starting to turn that awful burning colour, which we wouldn’t expect this early in the year.
It is affecting how we are managing the stock and their rotation around the farm.
The need for rain has been magnified since we are working through our arable sowing.
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We grow a good percentage of the farm for arable silage: some we sell to other farms, some we keep for ourselves for the contract-reared dairy heifers.
The dry weather has allowed us to get on really well with working the fields and now everything is in, we could do with some rain to get the crops going.
But being a fussy farmer, we don’t want the heavy downpours as this tends to wash away our work down the hill.
Arable silage works really well for us as we undersow crops with Italian ryegrass; it is a great option to put weaned lambs on in late summer.
We also use the whole process to renew leys across the farm, although it’s interesting that there are some fields we never touch in terms of ploughing.
(Of course, being an upland farm, soil depth isn’t a premium, so a lot of fields are out by default.)
The reason is because the historic ley that is in the fields is great at growing grass and we don’t want to touch it.
What I find most interesting about these fields is we can absolutely hammer them with livestock – you would think there is no way back – yet the regrowth is unbelievable.
We might give a nudge with some muck in spring and a few weeks later they have recovered.
I’d love to know the reason why they perform so well – when we test the soil, it’s no different to other areas of the farm.
The soil structure and grass type must just suit each other. If only we could replicate these magic fields everywhere.