Paula Hynes: From AI to DIY - It’s all go on the farm in Aherla

The farm always requires some routine maintenance, and the summer months are a chance to tackle some of these jobs, writes Aherla dairy farmer Paula Hynes.

The heat and health monitoring collars used on the Hynes farm.

The weather is simply glorious, but the drop of rain in the forecast has been welcome. We held off on spreading fertiliser until we were assured rain and that was down to lessons learned during the summer drought in 2018.

The advice at the time during the drought was to continue to spread fertiliser but with multiple rounds of N spread before we saw rain, grass took a nitrogen surge and we lost a cow to bloat.