What a difference a bit of sunshine makes! In the last month, we have gone from continuous wet cold weather to glorious sunny days. All the stock are out and grazing in near perfect conditions. The grass is not plentiful so far this year but what we have got is of good quality. Our cows are milking remarkably well so far this spring. This may be partly because they milked well all winter on three times a day milking and came out of the winter in good condition. The fine weather between the 18th and 26th of May enabled us and many other farmers to make some excellent first cut silage. With a bit of rain to help it grow, we should have a good second cut end of June/ early July.
Foot and mouth is now slowly going away, though we must continue to be careful because as they have found in other areas it can flare up at any time. Phil commented last month that in allowing up to four and a half-hour journeys to an abattoir, no lessons had been learnt re foot and mouth. Animal movements around the country have helped the spread of the FMD but they were not the cause of it. The main lesson to be learnt is to stop importing food products of dubious quality from countries where FMD is endemic. Restrictions will have to be placed on animal movements, but if this is to happen it must be on all imports into this country otherwise British farmers will be severely disadvantaged.
I was interested to hear recently that organic milk producers have had to take a price cut because so many farmers have been encouraged to go organic that the market has become over supplied. It has always seemed obvious to me that trying to sell milk for a premium when there is no evidence to suggest that it is any better or different than milk produced conventionally, is not going to be sustainable. Meanwhile, those of us conventional milk producers have enjoyed a small price increase.
FMD restrictions particularly for farmers on form D notices are causing major problems because they are unable to sell their livestock and therefore have no income. However, every cloud has a silver lining and I know of two farmers who ceased milk production a year ago and intended to sell the young stock when they calved. They have been unable to sell them and have had to restart milk production. Not only are they now benefiting from a higher milk price, but when they are eventually able to sell their heifers they will get more for them than they probably originally anticipated. Good luck to them!