Bad weather means Lancashire farmers face uncertain winter

The constant barrage of rain has made it increasingly difficult for East Lancashire farmers to cut and collect their grass which is stored away and fed to the animals during the winter months.

David Graveston, a dairy farmer from Gisburn and chairman of the National Farmers’ Union Lancashire branch, said he was only now foraging his final wheat and grass crops, more than a month later than usual.

He said: “The amount of grass we have cut this summer means our stocks are short and the quality is substandard because a lot of it has been stood in the field too long.

“We will run short and will have to buy more replacement feed in than normal which means extra costs.

“Winter has effectively started earlier as well. All our cows are inside which means our stocks of silage are already being eaten in to.”

Mr Graveston still has 90 acres of third crop grass to cut which he hopes to get in this week.

Third crop is when the grass on a field has been foraged for the third time in a summer and many farmers have not even been able to collect their second crops which has severely affected winter feed stocks.

The problem is that the ground has been saturated for the duration of the summer which meant that machinery was unable to get on to fields because the land was too wet.

Eric Dowson, who farms a dairy herd at Clayton-le-Dale, said he had been affected like everyone else.

He said: “We have still to cut the last crop of grass and its not grown that well because the fertiliser we have down has been washed away because of all the rain. We are hoping to get at it this week but the problem is we need a few dry days and if we don’t get that we’ll struggle.

“It’s the third crop and it should have been brought in by now, probably three-weeks-ago really.

“There is wheat still out there that we haven’t been able to get at which we might have to write-off.

"If that’s the case then we’ll have to buy it in and that affects our profit.”