Many Scottish farmers are mentally very tired and feeling low and fragile as a result of the appalling weather, low prices and uncertainty about what the future holds.

The cold late spring and extremely wet weather in the Highlands, Western Isles, Caithness and Orkney led to livestock being kept indoors for much longer than usual as the land was too sodden to be grazed.

With feed bills mounting as winter supplies of fodder and silage ran out, many were forced to sell cattle much earlier than planned and at lower prices than usual to avoid turning them out-of-doors and trampling the pasture into a sea of mud.

A lot of the older farmers in Orkney can't remember a worse year and say that although 1979 was very bad for them, at least it turned wet later in the year so they were able to sow barley in the spring - but this year there were few chances for that.

Many dairy herds in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire will never have been outside, and a fair number of the rest are restricted to grazing during the day and kept indoors at night. When they come in from the muddy fields for the evening milking it is taking longer to wash their udders clean before attaching the milking units. Many of Scotland's dairy cows are now being fed buffer rations of silage to make up for the grazing shortfall.

Most areas of Scotland have struggled to make any hay so far, and many are even finding it hard to make silage, and much of what has been made is of poor quality.

The cold conditions reduced the grass growth, but not the date when seed heads emerged, resulting in low yields of quite fibrous, less nutritious material.

The poorer the quality of the silage the less cattle eat. This lower daily silage intake is further reduced by having to feed more concentrated, cereal-based feeds to maintain animal growth rates and milk yields. In some cases concentrate requirements over a 180-day winter feeding period could be increased two or three-fold compared with when good quality silage is available.

All classes of animals are failing to thrive this year and that will lead to lighter, leaner cattle and lambs this autumn. Sheep farmers are really feeling the pinch just now with lamb prices currently down by about £12 per head on the year as a result of the strength of Sterling in relation to the Euro making exports difficult. That has been exacerbated by the disruption to transport at the English Channel, and some exporters stopped buying lambs last week because of the problems. With silage being delayed due to the wet conditions there will be less aftermath (lush re-growth) this autumn to fatten lambs on.

Hill farmers are bracing themselves for a difficult time at the autumn sheep sales, and the double whammy of having less lambs to sell as a result of higher than usual losses in the cold, late spring.

Everything from spraying crops and weeds to getting sheep shorn, or getting this year's harvest underway has been disrupted by the rain.

I suppose the darkest clouds hang over the dairy industry that is having to cope with the collapse in milk prices as a result of a glut of dairy products on the world market. Adverse exchange rates are hitting UK milk producers just as hard as lamb producers as a consequence of the value of the Euro against Sterling having fallen by 10 per cent since the beginning of 2015 - it has fallen by 16.4 per cent since the dairy market was at a high in February 2014.

Many dairy farmers are currently producing milk well below the cost of production and there will be casualties as the year progresses and feed bills mount. Biggest losers just now are lower-yielding, older cows that are being culled in increasing numbers to cut costs. Fortunately the markets for cull cows and beef are holding up in the face of more cast dairy cows being available.

While the weather has got most farmers down in the dumps just now, a sunny spell could be just around the corner and things could soon change for the better. A dry, warm August and September would put a smile back on the faces of many. Unfortunately, the bad weather to date will still leave most livestock farmers facing lost livestock production and an expensive winter.