Wendy Tobitt of Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust explores the summer task which makes extra use of meadow plants

Across the county the Wildlife Trusts’ meadows are buzzing to the sounds of haymaking. From mid-July our fields, which up to then had been kaleidoscopes of colourful plants and feathery grasses have been mown and transformed into sweet-smelling animal fodder.

Traditionally, grassland and pasture is cut for hay from late June into July, a few weeks when the long sunlit hours help to dry off the mowings. A hay-bob attached to a tractor also turns the hay to ‘make’ it before it’s baled.

Cutting grasses and flowers at the peak of their growth keeps the meadows in good condition for wildlife. Seed set is important for a few annual plants such as yellow rattle, a hemi-parasite that reduces the vigour of grasses allowing more space for the less competitive plants to flourish instead. Many hay meadow plants are perennial and have no seed to set.

Ground nesting birds such as curlew have fledged and flown, and many insects prefer the varied height of grassy habitats with taller unmown strips near hedges.

Lisa Lane, who manages Oxfordshire’s largest nature reserve Chimney Meadows and the National Nature Reserve, explains: “It’s important to make hay from the floodplain meadows as it helps to keep the nutrient levels in the soil low, which in turn stops more competitive species from dominating the grassland.”

In recent years BBOWT has made enough hay to be winter fodder for the trust’s own cattle, ponies and sheep, and have plenty to store and sell during the winter.

“In good weather our hay dries well and has a good variety of sweet-scented grasses and herbage, which retain the nutrients that horses seem to enjoy. Small bales are popular with local horse owners, and there’s a ready market further afield too. A couple of years ago we exported hay to Ireland after they’d had a particularly wet summer,” says Lisa.

Chimney Meadows is one of 60 Coronation Meadows across the UK, and last year supplied green hay to create new wildflower meadows on a nearby farm.

During last winter several meadows were under water for many weeks. These conditions are part of the natural cycle for floodplain meadows, although the flooding was longer than usual. The frequency of this amount of flooding and the length of time water is lying on the soil could become a problem for wildlife of the meadows.

The ‘once in a hundred years floods’ have happened four times since 2007, but wildlife needs more time to recover from these long inundations.

Water lying on soil for too long has adverse effects on animals living in the soil, such as worms, insects and bugs. This means less food for shrews and voles, with the consequence of fewer small mammals for barn owls.

Flooding in summer as well as winter is now a fact of life at Chimney Meadows, so BBOWT is managing the fields carefully to improve the diversity of wildlife habitats.

A mobile sheep pen, the installation of new fencing around some of the meadows on higher ground, new water troughs and pasture pumps mean that sheep and cattle will be able to graze fields that, in the past, were inaccessible in winter.

Funding for this infrastructure came from WREN, a not-for-profit business that administers the Biodiversity Action Fund grants generated by landfill tax from sites owned by FCC Environment. Last month staff from WREN visited Chimney Meadows to see the new equipment and meet some of the Dexter cattle, also bought from the grant award.

Chimney Meadows is now a demonstration site to show local landowners what can be achieved with floodplain meadows, Lisa explains: “We’ve hosted visits from farmers in the Upper Thames Living Landscape, which is a larger area than the nature reserves. They appreciate that we’re doing a good job, and they’re considering how they can manage their floodplain meadows for wildlife.”