Some well needed rain arrived at Ballicherry this week, but with only 7mm falling after three weeks of extremely dry weather it was a little disappointing, especially when some parts of the Black Isle received 25mm+ in the same timeframe.

However, some rain is better than nothing! Cereal crops, grass and newly drilled carrots were desperate for a drink so it has helped green things up a little, though it is too late for one field of early drilled barley in a sandy field which looks completely fried.

Grain marketing continues to be challenging. With extreme volatility, we have sold a lot less forward than we would usually have at this time of year, which looking at the trend, is probably going to be a bad thing, but hindsight is a wonderful thing!

Fertiliser prices seem to be well down, with liquid nitrogen less than half the price per tonne now than it was this time last year. Last month, we drilled 2acres of fodder beet and 5acres of neeps, hopefully for feeding ewes and lambs on over winter. Both crops are still intact at present with reasonable weed control but beastie pests have started having a go at them, so we’re unsure if they are going to make it through or not.

We got our hoggs clipped at the end of May, applied blowfly strike prevention treatment and shifted them to summer grazing. Hopefully we will get the ewes clipped in the next fortnight or so, as they are not enjoying the fierce heat and humidity we’ve been having with their woolly jumpers still on.

I had one ewe with mastitis this week – the first case in weeks and likely related to the hot weather and presence of flies. I’ve also had one case of fly strike so far which was in a lamb, which was hopefully caught early enough not to affect growth rates too badly. My plan is to get Clik extra onto all lambs this week and ewes with dirty tails have been dagged to hopefully reduce chances of fly strike prior to clipping.

The cold, dry spring has stressed our grass fields and pushed them to set seed, with the result being we have very little fresh growth grazing available for the sheep.

We didn’t get our usual paddock grazing system up in time which has made the situation worse, as paddock grazing always seems to work well in situations of stress and reduced crop growth. But, we have done a lot of topping this week and erected multiple electric fences to get us back into our usual rotational grazing pattern to maximise grass utilisation.

Such has been the shortage of grass that we actually had to give one group of ewes a bale of silage this week which is not something we usually have to do in June! We only have 15 bales of 2022 cut silage left which is good as we don’t find it keeps well the second year for feeding to sheep.

The 2023 silage crop was cut on Tuesday this week and hopefully we will get it all baled and wrapped while the weather remains dry and warm.