Frightening fodder shortage takes its toll on Scottish farmers

In the North and North-east of the country, drought conditions have had a serious effect on grass growth, with some farmers reporting they only managed to make half the quantity of silage they did last year, while others have had to rent additional acres to make up for poor silage crops at home. 
As a result, demand for silage, hay and straw, has seen prices per tonne and per bale rocket, which in turn has doubled winter feed bills for some livestock producers, and most farmers reckon draff will be impossible to source in the winter due to bio-digesters across the country competing with them for this valuable resource. 
Further south, the situation seems to be a little more positive, as rain that fell during August and September produced a surge in grass growth, allowing farmers to take decent second cuts of silage and fill half empty pits. However, a farmer from the South-west said it could be a case of quantity over quality as some silage in pits may lack some of the nutrients which will be needed during the winter.

ORKNEY
Susan Cruickshank, manager at Orkney Business Ring – From August until now, we’ve taken home nine loads (16 to 18 tonnes) of barley and wheat straw from Aberdeenshire which equates to 153 tonnes. We have a further 18 loads requested from members but those members are the same ones who always request straw so I wouldn’t say we have people shouting out for straw this year. 
We’re guiding at a price of £100 per tonne, which is back £20 on the year and it costs approximately £1200 per load for haulage. A lot of farmers up here had a good harvest, so there definitely isn’t the same demand. 
For the past three years, Highland Business Services have been transporting straw from Invergordon direct to Westray and last month 600 bales were put to the island. Those with straw are probably holding on to it for a bit longer to see if the price will rise.
William Harcus, Quanterness, Kirkwall – I don’t personally have a fodder shortage because we’ve had an incredibly good, dry year on Orkney and everything has happened on the seasons it should have. 
The livestock are doing well and our water table at the moment is the lowest it has been in five years. If we could get a growing season like this every year, it would be brilliant. 

CAITHNESS 
Stephen Sutherland, of Stainland and Sibmister Farms, Thurso, who runs a 400-suckler cow herd alongside a large scale sheep enterprise with his family – Caithness has fared better after the hot, dry summer compared to other regions and ‘we’ve managed to make more silage than last year, although the quality of the silage isn’t as good. 
Last year, we suffered wet and cold conditions in June so we were short on silage which made for a very expensive winter and resulted in as buying in as much as 600 tonnes of draff. Although we won’t have to do that this year, with the price of straw and grain having rocketed and the fact that all our straw is bought in, our straw bill has significantly increased by a five-figure sum and grain costs have increased by £40 to £50 per tonne. As a result, we’ve just recently sold 30 cows direct to ABP. 

STRATHSPEY
Geordie Ray, farm manager at Ballintomb, Grantown-on-Spey, where he runs a 240-suckler herd and 1200 breeding ewes – Our land here is gravel and sand, and the majority of our fields are south facing so they’ve been badly burnt this year. We also had a slow spring and probably grazed fields longer than normal. 
Although we did do a second cut for the pit which we don’t normally do, we are still around 700 tonnes short of silage and that’s with us taking a cut of grain fields which were under sown with a one year grass. Due to this shortage, we’ve bought in 100 tonnes of draff which we wouldn’t have normally done yet and it’ll be unlikely that we’ll manage to get more throughout the winter. 
We’ve also bought in 200 tonnes of straw from Lincolnshire, which is double what we usually have to buy. With this in mind, we’ve just recently sold 50 yearlings at least six weeks earlier than normal and have cut back on the ewes so we can prevent grazing fields being overstocked in the spring. 
It’s hoped we’ll still be able to cut some more grass for silage and bale it. For now, we’ll soldier on and monitor as we go, and hopefully we won’t have to cut back on the suckler herd. 

MORAYSHIRE
Martin Birse, farm manager at Pitgaveny Farms, a large-scale beef, sheep, pig and arable unit near Elgin – We have been very badly affected by the drought this year and have been feeding cattle outside since June with straw and older silage we had left. The lambs have also been weaned earlier this year and put onto creep feeders. 
The quantity of our first cut silage is half of what it usually is and we never managed to get a second cut because we had to graze the ewes on the grass. Luckily, we’ve managed to buy silage from a neighbour and have secured 400 tonnes of draff. 
Usually, we sell a fair bit of grain and straw but our grain yields were back from 2.7t/acre to 2.1t/acre and we had to keep all of our spring barley straw to feed the cattle. Our wheat straw has gone onto carrots, as well as oilseed rape straw – nothing has been chopped this year. We’ve also put in stubble neeps this year which has worked well. 
This year’s drought and the fact that we’re going to be short on fodder supplies has resulted in a strict culling process. We just recently scanned the cows, so anything which was empty or non-productive will go and we’re culling hard on the ewes, too. Usually, we have a culling pen for cows but this year they’ll just be kept to a reasonable condition and go. 
If we’re in the same situation next summer, we will be irrigating all our grass fields. 

ABERDEENSHIRE 
Alistair Shepherd, Stoneyford, Tarland, Aboyne, who runs a 140-suckler cow herd – The fodder situation is not good here – we have half the amount of silage in our pit that we did last year. 
We sold 24 yearlings at the mart four weeks ago and they’d usually be kept right through to the spring but we just don’t have the fodder. The worry is, buyers don’t have the straw or fodder either so they’ll be reluctant to buy younger, longer keep store cattle. 
Grass growth just never got going because the cattle and sheep were grazed for longer and into late spring, and then the fields just got burnt. We’re probably going to have to cut back on cow numbers but we will try and buy hay because there’s plenty good quality hay about but it’ll be so expensive. Draff is also going to be very hard to get.
Another farmer from Deeside stated that the fodder situation was pretty serious although second cuts of silage recently done in the area were better than expected. He only had half the amount of silage made compared to last year and said a couple of his neighbours only managed to make a quarter of last year. 
TAYSIDE
George Graham, Home Farm, Tealing – Once the rain came after the dry spell, the crops blossomed, so we don’t have the same fodder shortage on the horizon that we maybe could have talked about in July. I would say that most folk, locally, have seen reasonable crops of grass across the area.
Many livestock producers, particularly folk like myself with dairy cattle, but beef farmers too, were anticipating fodder shortages this winter as a result of lighter yields of silage, hay and straw. 
Light yields of first-cut silage due to the dry conditions, were being fed to our dairy cows this summer to supplement their drought-stricken grazing. Fortunately there was a surge in grass growth in response to the rain that fell during August and September, which has enabled us to make extra silage to fill half empty pits.
The anticipated shortage of straw for fodder and bedding has also been eased because we baled a lot of our straw, rather than chopping back in to the soil.
The availability and cost of buying feed and fodder is still going to be a major worry for many this year, so a good open and dry backend that allows cattle to graze outside longer would be a big help.

EAST LOTHIAN
James Ferguson, East Linton – We had a problem in getting the levels of irrigation we needed over our crops during those weeks of really hot, prolonged dry, weather, and that’s had a knock-on effect when it came to what fodder we’ve managed to get in this year.
Grass-wise, I would say our area has faired not too badly. I don’t see people having to go daft by buying in extra fodder where we are. 
We usually buy some in anyway and if the weather holds for the next few weeks, we hopefully won’t need to up what we usually buy in. 
We buy from the same supplier every year as well and talking to him this week, I don’t think prices will be up too sore compared to what we were paying last year. That can always change as time goes on, though, so I wouldn’t want to jinx it! 
Yes people had light first and second cuts to contend with, but pits are filling up nicely, and third cuts have fairly topped things up. One thing I would say is that we’re being more brutal with putting cattle off. 
If things aren’t in calf, or generally aren’t doing, we’re putting them off. Varying fodder levels or not, you just can’t afford to give things too many second chances these days. 
SCOTTISH BORDERS
James Donald, Pottershead, Roberton – If you’d asked me a few months ago, I probably would have told you a much more worrying tale that I can now. Things are not fantastic, by any means, but we certainly have more in the silage pit than I would have predicted we would have done at the end of June, into the start of July. 
Really, the full impact of any fodder shortage this year will not really be felt until the end of the winter, as supplies run out in February and March, so we’ll just need to wait and see how the winter goes, and where we are once we’re through what will be the colder, no doubt wetter, months. 
As autumn sets in, the weather turns wet and cold and the evenings grow darker, those hot temperatures of June and July certainly seem a distant memory, already.
We’re definitely a bit further into next year’s fodder than we would like to be, which isn’t ideal, but I wouldn’t say we’ve seen too much of a decrease in quality, which is good. Putting poor quality silage into our cows would certainly be adding insult to injury, but unfortunately I know it to be the situation a lot of people are in. 
The long term worry is though, that the cost of production is going up, along with the demand on feed stocks, bedding and everything else. It’s a never ending, up hill, battle. 

STRANRAER 
Gary Mitchell, West Galdenoch, Stranraer – Generally speaking, forage stocks seem to be ok, and people should be close to having enough. There’s maybe less in the pits. 
We’re zero grazing and the quality of the grass is very good. My main concern would be milk price. It’s steady just now, but there are indications that it will fall. 
Bought-in feed is also very expensive and the good quality silage that was made early in the summer, has already been eaten. 
Dairy boys will also have to eventually decide if they are going to up their concentrate levels, or if they let their milk drop. If the weather stays decent for the next few weeks, then that will give things a boost as we get into the winter. 
Straw is still expensive but I’ve not heard of people struggling to get hold of it and prices are not a lot different to last year just now, so that’s good. 
In early July we has no grass at all, but after that bit of rain, come mid-August things took off, so I don’t think people are as well back fodder wise as they were maybe expecting. 
There should be enough quantity in the country – plenty of boys are out getting bales in just now just to get the grass lifted – so forage will be available, but it’ll come down to the quality. Not that it will be bad eating, but it may lack some of the nutrients folk are looking for as you get into the depth of it. 

DUMFRIES AND GALLOWAY
Colin Burns, Auldgirth – Like everybody else, we’re seeing increased feed, forage, and bedding costs, with barley straw at £85 a tonne for us, but there’s definitely more straw on the go than folks were predicting, so I don’t see us rushing to stock pile any more than we would usually be getting at this stage.  
This was a concern for those with straw to sell, as there were still a large number of bales in the fields and arable farmers were getting anxious to sell them before the winter rains, but I don’t think that threat has really been seen out.  I know round about us, more folk were getting increased amounts of straw in as well, which obviously makes a difference to the market. 
Silage-wise, pits are maybe a bit on the light side, but personally, we’ve got some good quality stuff in, so we have to have that quality versus quantity debate. Samples are showing much higher dry matter percentage and more energy, with good fermentation characteristics, compared to our 2017 cut.