Paula Hynes: Hair cuts and grass cuts on the farm

Irish Examiner

21-05-2025

While our heifers have been taking a brief break from showing, Becky was back on the circuit last weekend as she was drafted in by Daniel and Eimer Curtin of Euro Holsteins in Listowel to prepare 10 animals for Kingdom County Fair.
With the Curtins having such a big team going to Kerry's biggest agricultural show, Becky spent two days clipping the three cows and seven heifers, including an early start on the Sunday morning to make final preparations before the truck transported the team to the show.
The hours of work paid off for Euro Holsteins, claiming five first placings along with a few second and third placings. Becky also donned her show whites to show the Junior Champion for the Curtins, and also showed the Reserve Senior Champion. It was a great day for the team, with the Curtins also claiming Honourable Mention in the Senior Championship.
We haven't been to Kingdom County Fair, but Becky assured me it is a fantastic show. Congratulations to Euro Holsteins on a very successful show.
Our new mower
While Becky was busy cutting hair, we have been busy here preparing to cut grass. There was some very welcome misty rain on Monday night followed by a heavy downpour on Tuesday morning at 5am, the noise of the rain woke me and it really was a welcome sound to be woken by.
I love the sunshine but this prolonged spell of fine weather is really taking its toll on farms. Tillage farmers who have spring-sown crops are in dire need of rain, or crops will start to fail quickly.
Some livestock farms have seen no rain, and with grass growth deteriorating rapidly, they are already having to introduce palm kernel to supplement cows, as there is no sign of rain for at least another week.
Normally, we are looking for a dry spell to mow a surplus grass paddock; however, we had selected a paddock last weekend that needed to be mowed, and the decision was made that we would only mow it if we got rain. With the sound of the early morning rain on Tuesday, we mowed the paddock on Wednesday and Deasys were in to bale it on Thursday evening.
It also gave us the chance to try out our new mower prior to mowing first-cut. We had a 9ft Kuhn trailed mower, which we purchased second-hand from Cork Farm Machinery. Kuhn makes an exceptionally good mower; our 9ft one was 23 years old which is a fair testament for any mower.
CFM sales rep Alec Sweetnam took a look at our mower as a possible trade-in, and once he had worked the figures, we shook hands on a deal for a new 10ft Kuhn trailed FC 3161 TLD. We can justify having a good trailed mower on the farm when we mow all our own silage, and it leaves us great flexibility in being able to mow when we want.
Our MF 5S 125 can easily handle the Kuhn trailed mower, and the reality is we would need a far bigger tractor to handle the weight of a similar mounted mower. The FC 3161 TLD leaves grass in super condition to maximise wilt. We have the option of rowing after the conditioner or lay flat to increase wilt area with heavier crops.
CFM always gives us a super back-up service, we have purchased the tractor, tedder, fertiliser spreader and mower through them and Alec is always a great help with advice as he previously worked as a mechanic in CFM, so he understands the workings of the machines and any maintenance required.
Our new Kuhn mower. We can justify having a good trailed mower on the farm when we mow all our own silage, and it leaves us great flexibility in being able to mow when we want.
With a bit more output from the new mower, we mowed first-cut last Saturday before CCS contracting raked and picked up for us on Sunday. Although one of the main silage fields is tied up with 10 acres of maize this year, we managed to close the same acreage by including two paddocks from the grazing platform.
With silage on the go, we weren't at Bandon Show this year, but Pete did manage to get finished mowing in time for us to make good friend Linda Daly's 40th birthday celebration. We have known Linda for over a quarter of a century through a common passion for horses.
For all of us, life is hectic with kids and animals, and I often think the best friends are those who you might not see for six months and when you do meet, it feels like you had met last week as well.
Silage
Birthday drinks during silage is also a good excuse to get the glad rags on before the dreaded task of covering the silage pit, and with the level of sunshine and heat at the moment, covering the silage pit is the equivalent of multiple gym sessions in the space of two hours. Thankfully, James Deasy put all the tires up on the pit with the loader after packing it so all that was left was a little distribution of the tyres.
We also mowed one field on the Friday evening which we had chosen for show cow feed, it was a weed-free field with lots of quality and enough stem to meet the show cows' requirements. Aidan Deasy raked it on the Saturday evening and baled it on the Sunday morning. We used pink bale wrap, as I always feel it is a great way to highlight breast cancer awareness.
With some rain finally in the forecast for the coming days, we will be spreading slurry on all fields which were mowed, and then we will decide what we will close up for second-cut. Once the rain does arrive, there should be a good surge in grass growth as soil temperatures are high, but while we long for some rainy days, hopefully there will be some fine weather ahead still for the summer.