2026 has gifted us another summer of drought. To be honest, if given a choice between a wet or dry summer, I'd opt for a dry one as our farm has heavy soil. Heading off to find a part of a field dry enough to let cows graze is not to be recommended during June, July or August. We still have some green grass but started buffering with maize first, then maize and bales of silage. Now, it's maize mixed with soya hulls pre-milking and bales of silage after milking before the cows go out to graze green crispy grass. Many farmers have opened silage pits, which probably means they've used up all bales made from surplus during May and June.
Yet, to me at least, it isn't as dire or as worrying a situation as in 2018. Then, it stopped raining on May 31st. Farmers harvested their first cut of silage in May, but as grass growth diminished and soils dried out so much that Bronze Age site outlines became visible, things were serious. We ended up harvesting the second cut of silage as bales (barely two to the acre) in July and harvested the third cut in mid-September for the pits. But we didn't know in July if we'd get another cut of silage and if not, what were we going to feed the livestock in the winter? Glanbia took preorders for alfalfa, importing it from Spain, and we bought a lorry-load which ended up lasting us a couple of years as a buffer feed. It was a worrying time wondering how we'd get enough fodder for the cows for summer and winter. For years, we always had plenty of silage left yet plenty of surplus is becoming rare now, no matter how much we make. There's either a very wet autumn or a very wet spring and sometimes both. This is our fourth year growing maize and it's invariably used as a buffer feed in summer or autumn as the weather turns very dry or very wet.
Yes, 2026 is an expensive summer. Parts of the country have broken records with temperatures and the length of the heatwave. Slievenamon is still burning as far as I know. There are wildfires in other parts too. On this farm, I've never fed the February and March born calves meal so late into the summer, well, perhaps in 2018. The beef heifers, as in 2018, are surprisingly content on crispy burnt grass, but we're now letting them into the yard each day to eat the silage left by the dairy cows. They turned their noses up at it initially, but are now eating some. Milk yields are down. Embryo losses could be happening and we'll be finding out if cows show up on heat in the coming days. But most farmers have two good cuts of silage and the pits are full. However, some farmers are having to feed from those pits!
Whatever feed is being given to cows and other livestock, it's not just the cost; it's time-consuming too. The winter job of foddering takes significant time each day. There's no end in sight either as although we had a little drizzle today, the forecast indicates it'll be another week before there's any rain of significance. Temperatures in England are to shoot up again; thankfully it's cooler here. A lot depends on when we get rain, how quickly grass responds and how much silage has to be fed to cows in the meantime.
However, I'm not as stressed as I was in 2018. Maybe it's because we've been through it before. The peaks and troughs are coming faster and more frequently now, and are steeper than ever before. Each year seems to have price cuts, input price increases or challenging weather to contend with. If it's not one thing, it's another. We can't do anything about the weather or global prices or the Strait of Hormuz but we can say we've been here before and we came through, we'll do it again.
Let me know how you are faring. Best of luck, Lorna x