Farm Diary by Gwyn Jones

All in all, it could not have gone much better, and we have hopefully over two thousand tonnes of well made silage. It will take a month or so to ferment and stabilise, and in the meantime we are feeding all the baled silage we made last autumn, and bringing back a clamp of first cut silage made last year, from Tillington.

The showery weather is now perfect for re-growth, and the grass is leaping out of the ground. We have emptied the slurry tower on the silage fields, and the rain is washing it in very nicely.

The maize is being sprayed when conditions allow, and looks good. It certainly benefited from the warm weather last week, and another drink is doing it no harm at all. We are now mowing behind the cows in the paddocks, in order to reset the grazing height at two inches, and cut any clumps of ungrazed pasture, and of course any thistles or weeds.

Gwenan is doing the same behind the young heifers over at Tillington, where we have also sprayed the weeds, hoping that there will be fewer ragwort plants to pull as a result.

The Queen is to sell her Ayrshire herd due to low milk prices. The Ayrshire herd was started by George VI in 1951, but high costs of production in these days of low milk prices make the herd unviable.

Mark Osman, whom I know very well, is now managing the cows at Windsor Royal Farms, and he will be rationalising the operations there, and concentrating on the other cows. The Jersey herd which has supplied the Royal family with milk and cream since 1849 will remain.

The dairy industry is in recovery and forging ahead; every week there are announcements of price increases across the board.

What about the overall position of the industry as far as the dairy farmer is concerned? We still have a long way to go; prices are moving, but from a very low point, where on average, a loss of 3.5ppl was made on every litre of milk produced in 2006. Dairy farmers seem reluctant on the whole to believe that better times are coming, and the massive increase in costs in 2006 has sapped their enthusiasm.

It is unlikely that the recovery will influence or save those set to leave in the next two years, and I fully expect production to keep falling for the time being.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette May 30