- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
There’s only the one major topic of conversation amongst farming circles just now, and it’s the dry spell to which I alluded last week. Right across the South and East of the country it is now causing very real problems for many operations. You need to be a long way North and West before you find many unaffected.
Reduced forage yields for sheep and cattle are the issues nearest my heart, as grassland turns to dust, and reduced crops leave barns worryingly empty. At every turn, I’m hearing of farmers already feeding next winters feed, with nothing in reserve for when it would’ve been needed. Really….at every turn. Reports are trickling in of fat cattle being pushed into abattoirs before time, and numbers of store cattle appearing at markets from unexpected quarters due to looming crisis. This is only going to do one thing for the trade. Look a bit deeper, and you can see the cracks. Some of the store stock is coming from dairy farmers who need to preserve scarce fodder for their milch cows. For once you’ve invested in the milking parlour, and signed the supply contract, you need to fill that milk tank every day, or things go wrong very fast. I suspect there are some heading for real trouble, and I can only offer sympathy.
You’d think it wouldn’t be a problem for a man on soggy Dartmoor, would you? And indeed I’m far better off than many, as the peat is still growing green stuff. It is impacting us though. Obviously we buy in our straw, and that bill already sounds like it’s going to have an extra nought on the end this year. And because we can summer so much more stock on the rough, but are generally short on mowing ground, many of us expect to buy in a bit of fodder. Some only top up at the end of long winters, while others rely on the market for significant volumes of their winter feed. I know of one or two who buy every stick of hay. The knock on effect for them is going to be a problem. It is also normal long established practice to rely more on extra grazing on the high commons in dry years- like we’re in now. Unfortunately, ever tightening movement and TB regulations are preventing several of my colleagues from using this desperately needed breathing space.
At Coaker Hall, the stack of bales looks impressive enough, but by now I’m usually struggling to squeeze past the wrapper, as the main pile grows a west wing, and starts to block out the sun. Not this year. A bit of fag packet maths –and these days I’m struggling to find fag packets on which to do my sums- suggest I’ve got about 1300 round bales worth of fodder put by, when last summer’s shear yielded over 1600, and being down with TB, we had to top that up by about 200 late in the winter. Will I find another 300-500 round bales worth of grass to mow? It seems unlikely, even with a following wind.
Soon, I’m going to want to be punting some store lambs –and while the numbers aren’t massive, it’s a fine lot of glossy looking lambs I’m seeing the boy handle through the pens. Whether my regular buyers are going to be ready to bid is another matter. I daren’t hold many weaned lambs about if we’re ever to find any kind of second cut- and that depends on some proper rain.
It’s far from universal though, even fairly locally. I was on the phone with a lad in the South Hams the other evening, as he was baling straw. Following a big combine, through a bumper yield of oat straw, I could hear the buzzer going off –indicating he had to stop and spit out another dumpling- almost continuously. Oat straw can be a useful feed, and I had to ask…but no, he needed every bale. Hey ho.
Elsewhere, several areas of Northern Europe and Scandinavia are frazzled to a crisp, so we hear, along with some American colleagues who’re badly dried out. Mind that all pales to insignificance when talking to chums in Australia. We’ve friends who really know what a drought is, and after 2 years without rain, are faced with realities we can scarcely imagine. They habitually try to plan for dry conditions –up to and including burying reserves of fodder underground for such times. But they’re beyond such provisions now, and the pictures aren’t pretty. That, at least, should help keep it in perspective here.
Anyway, I’m only mentioning all this so as to induce a deluge to make me look stupid. That’d be just fine with me.
-------------------------
Anton's articles are syndicated exclusively by TFF by kind permission of the author and WMN.
Anton also writes regularly for the Dartmoor Magazine and the NFU
He has published two books; the second "The Complete Bullocks" is still in print
http://www.anton-coaker.co.uk/book.htm
Reduced forage yields for sheep and cattle are the issues nearest my heart, as grassland turns to dust, and reduced crops leave barns worryingly empty. At every turn, I’m hearing of farmers already feeding next winters feed, with nothing in reserve for when it would’ve been needed. Really….at every turn. Reports are trickling in of fat cattle being pushed into abattoirs before time, and numbers of store cattle appearing at markets from unexpected quarters due to looming crisis. This is only going to do one thing for the trade. Look a bit deeper, and you can see the cracks. Some of the store stock is coming from dairy farmers who need to preserve scarce fodder for their milch cows. For once you’ve invested in the milking parlour, and signed the supply contract, you need to fill that milk tank every day, or things go wrong very fast. I suspect there are some heading for real trouble, and I can only offer sympathy.
You’d think it wouldn’t be a problem for a man on soggy Dartmoor, would you? And indeed I’m far better off than many, as the peat is still growing green stuff. It is impacting us though. Obviously we buy in our straw, and that bill already sounds like it’s going to have an extra nought on the end this year. And because we can summer so much more stock on the rough, but are generally short on mowing ground, many of us expect to buy in a bit of fodder. Some only top up at the end of long winters, while others rely on the market for significant volumes of their winter feed. I know of one or two who buy every stick of hay. The knock on effect for them is going to be a problem. It is also normal long established practice to rely more on extra grazing on the high commons in dry years- like we’re in now. Unfortunately, ever tightening movement and TB regulations are preventing several of my colleagues from using this desperately needed breathing space.
At Coaker Hall, the stack of bales looks impressive enough, but by now I’m usually struggling to squeeze past the wrapper, as the main pile grows a west wing, and starts to block out the sun. Not this year. A bit of fag packet maths –and these days I’m struggling to find fag packets on which to do my sums- suggest I’ve got about 1300 round bales worth of fodder put by, when last summer’s shear yielded over 1600, and being down with TB, we had to top that up by about 200 late in the winter. Will I find another 300-500 round bales worth of grass to mow? It seems unlikely, even with a following wind.
Soon, I’m going to want to be punting some store lambs –and while the numbers aren’t massive, it’s a fine lot of glossy looking lambs I’m seeing the boy handle through the pens. Whether my regular buyers are going to be ready to bid is another matter. I daren’t hold many weaned lambs about if we’re ever to find any kind of second cut- and that depends on some proper rain.
It’s far from universal though, even fairly locally. I was on the phone with a lad in the South Hams the other evening, as he was baling straw. Following a big combine, through a bumper yield of oat straw, I could hear the buzzer going off –indicating he had to stop and spit out another dumpling- almost continuously. Oat straw can be a useful feed, and I had to ask…but no, he needed every bale. Hey ho.
Elsewhere, several areas of Northern Europe and Scandinavia are frazzled to a crisp, so we hear, along with some American colleagues who’re badly dried out. Mind that all pales to insignificance when talking to chums in Australia. We’ve friends who really know what a drought is, and after 2 years without rain, are faced with realities we can scarcely imagine. They habitually try to plan for dry conditions –up to and including burying reserves of fodder underground for such times. But they’re beyond such provisions now, and the pictures aren’t pretty. That, at least, should help keep it in perspective here.
Anyway, I’m only mentioning all this so as to induce a deluge to make me look stupid. That’d be just fine with me.
-------------------------
Anton's articles are syndicated exclusively by TFF by kind permission of the author and WMN.
Anton also writes regularly for the Dartmoor Magazine and the NFU
He has published two books; the second "The Complete Bullocks" is still in print
http://www.anton-coaker.co.uk/book.htm
