Feeding The Girls

As I am writing this , the rain is lashing down and the cows are pacing up and down the fields for the last few pieces of grass. Their ration in the shed has increased greatly and they are now eating in excess of 3.2 tonnes of silage inbetween milkings. In with this they are getting barley, soya, straw and minerals. Before too long the cows will be in at nights and just out for a couple of hours through the day. It is always nice to see them are snug and warm in their cubicles which will be home for the next 180 days.
The youngstock will stay out as late as possible and they will get to graze any of the cow fields that still have a bit of grass on.
On the animal front, we still have a large backlog of calves to sell. this is due to the movement ban still being in force but this is supposed to be eased tomorrow. However, any buyer will be subject to a 20 movement ban at their own steading if they take any animals on, so I don't think many calves will be going away very fast.

A Stomach and 9 Holes To Fill

With the Dairy Event cancelled, I thought I would still take my 2 days off that I was going to have anyway.I was determined to not think about work too much. My "holiday" started on the Tuesday night with a Chinese buffet. All you can eat for £8.95.
Well this was a challenge waiting to be done , and I think I got WAY MORE than my £8.95's worth. Eating that much food in one sitting is not big and it's not clever.
And just to confirm that fact, the very next day I sat down in Pizza Hut in Newcastle and had an "all you can eat" buffet for £5.95. Well , the pain lasted for days and my meals for the next few days were pretty small.
This has been my weekend off , and I played my first proper 9 holes of golf today.
It's safe to say that my eating skills were far better than my golfing skills.
However , I have learned from today and I now know what to practice when I am next at the range.

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A Week of Work, Work, Work.

Since the last post with it's promise of a more regular update I have now left it well over a week. It's been the usual mega busy time with more calves being born. The re-emergence of Foot and Mouth has brought it's own problems as we are now seriously over stocked in the calf unit , with no sign of us getting any sold.
The grass is running out fast in the fields and the 111 cows being milked are now getting 2500kg of silage to supplement their ration.
With all the hectic running about of the last few weeks , a couple of days away would be just the tonic.
Sadly, my proposed trip to the Dairy Event is going to be a non starter as the event has been cancelled due to the FMD.
Chloanne Webster Gracious is now only 2 weeks off calving so she will be the topic of the next few posts.
Chloanne Dolman Ethel has been weaned and her mother, Frankham Sept Storm Ethel has been served already with the bull Heather Holme Velvet.

A Whole Weeks Gone By !!!

I have just noticed that it's been a whole week since I updated this Blog. I have been just so busy at work and when not, I have been updating the old MySpace site !!!!!
We started to feed the cows on some silage last week as the grass in the fields is starting to run out. They are responding fairly well to that and we shall need to be thinking of feeding them some form of concentrate food with it fairly soon.
Calving has been fairly busy.
Last night I had 2 sets of twins and a single. It was starting to look more like a nights lambing rather than a calving. All are well though, even if I am now exhausted.
The next couple of days are to be taken up with leading in wheat straw bales (approx 700 of them !) I think I won't be getting my whole weekend off this time round.
Tomorrow ( 7th) , the foot trimmer is coming in to do some cows feet for us. this is just routine and he comes in twice a year. It is good to keep on top of this job as if their feet are not sound then they won't walk correct, go lame and then not milk !
So it's off to bed early and I'll make a note to myself not to leave this for a week again.