We are currently suffering from a pleasant dilemma for pasture based dairy farmers. Too much grass. No I’m not complaining, I’d hate this to be seen as another ‘whingeing farmer’ story.

The fantastic late spring pasture growth of this year on top of a great spring-summer last year has resulted in huge volumes of fodder on hand on many farms in our district. Recent memory tells us it is hard to have too much stored fodder on hand. This time of the year only 3 or 4 years ago many farms in the region were chewing into meagre fodder reserves and wondering how they were going to feed their stock over a forecast long hot summer.

Part of the dilemma we are currently faced with is our pastures need to be harvested by cow or machine to maintain the quality of the pasture.  As the season progresses, feed quality declines and it costs a lot of money to harvest and store poor quality fodder.

I guess that too much of anything is always a problem, be it rain, fodder, sun shine or mud!  Farming really is a balancing act.