John Anderson discusses this year's tight grazing season

By the look of the forecast we are going to make it but only just. Since the start of July the weather has been extremely catchy and while it has made tremendous growing conditions to push on the growth of both grass and cereals, it has not created a huge amount of enthusiasm to get the mowers fired up.

Due to the tighter than normal grass situation back in the spring, we were forced to graze silage fields with sheep later than normal. With the later shut-off date, I was slightly concerned about silage yields. However, I needn’t have worried as most fields produced an excellent bulk. Ground conditions were just fair after a month of high rainfall but with all the trailers fitted out with flotation tyres, the damage was limited.

Around 150 tonnes of tatties which became available to us were added to the pit during ensiling which added an extra task to the operation ensuring they were spread in thin layers throughout. The tatties were chopped beforehand to prevent them becoming a choking hazard when fed. This was done by putting them through a rear discharge dung spreader against a wall which was a quick and surprisingly effective method. It’s not a feedstock I would expect to get every year but it will hopefully add some extra energy to what is normally relatively low quality July cut silage.

Sporadic rain showers

Spraying has been a bit of a nightmare over the last two months with sporadic rain showers causing decision making about whether to go or not extremely difficult.

Herbicide applications were a bit later than I would have ideally liked but fungicide and growth regulator timings have been good and everything seems to be keeping disease free. Barley has all had its head spray and the oats has had its final foliar application meaning the gates are now shut on these crops until harvest.

Focus is now turning to getting preparations underway for grain storage with the last of the 2025 milling oats currently getting moved off farm. It’s always a concern having grain stored for this long, especially with the mild winter we’ve had but the grain aeration pedestals that I’ve been using for the last four years have done a great job again of keeping the grain cold and bug free.

There is also the added job of installing a recently purchased 20t automatic batch dryer adding some extra capacity on top of our existing two dryers.

Stock feed potatoes has been incorporated into pit silage to add extra energy to winter feed (Image: John Anderson)

Scotland football team

We now have enough drying capacity to deal with the worst case scenario of a bad harvest but with fuel prices where they are I desperately hope that doesn’t happen. Despite kerosene prices dipping below 70p per litre for a short period, I still couldn’t bring myself to fill up the tanks and with the Iran ceasefire ending and oil prices shooting back up, my commodity purchasing ability is starting to look about as skilful as the Scotland football team.

It’s been a big year for establishing new grass here with reseeds almost totalling 100 acres with another 30 acres in the pipeline if we can fit it into the workload over the next few weeks. The first 40 acre was sown at the end of May with 2kg per acre of Westwolds added in to give some extra sheep gazing for this season.

The rest of the area was sown at the end of June along with a small amount of forage rape added in to aid lamb fattening later on.

To further grass management, I’ve purchased a Rappa electric fence winder with a view to trying out some paddock grazing with a couple of bunches of cows. To be honest, the thought of shifting about electric fences twice a week fills me with dread so the plan is to split some larger fields in half in order to better utilise some grazing swards that are getting out of hand.

It may be the case that I find it addictive and paddock graze the whole place next season. Either that or it might end up at the back of the workshop gathering dust till the end of time. Who knows, we will try it and see!