2009 NHBC Herd Competition Results

Last night , at the Northumbria Holstein Breeders Club AGM , the club also held their prize giving for the annual herds competition , which was judged way back in August 2009 . As ever ,i tried my best to put forward a strong team of cows and i was very pleasantly surprised with the results .
Our successes were as follows ;

1st place in the Large herds class (BOCM trophy)
2nd place in the Cow on Inspection class with Chloanne Goldwyn Gracious
1st place in the Super Cow class with Chloanne Webster Gracious (Barclays Bank trophy)
1st place in the Heifer in Milk class with Chloanne Goldwyn Gracious 2 (Alan Jackson trophy)
3rd place in the Heifer on Inspection class with Ellenneff Crest Becula 11
1st place in the Cow Family class with the Gracious family (Hunday trophy)
Top Herd on Production (Chas Halliday trophy)

The above results were fantastic .

Chloanne Goldwyn Gracious 2 has once again held up very well in the Top 1000 cows in the UK on PLI , holding a VERY respectable 74th place with a PLI of £228.
Chloanne Goldwyn Gracious is also still in the Top 1000 , with a PLI of £206 , which places her in 211th .

With figures like that , i am very much looking forward to hearing from Cogent Breeding Ltd in the next week or so about if they would be interested in perhaps contract mating Chloanne Goldwyn Gracious 2.

The classifier is due here on the 2nd Feb , so fingers crossed that some of the girls move up , it would be great to get Chloanne Hanno Gracious done again, but also to see how Chloanne Goldwyn Gracious does , she is really looking well just now , and always raises a smile every time she comes into the parlour for milking.

I will post the full set of results for the herd competition in the next few days !

Uncovering the Cars

The cars finally emerge from their snowy tombs !

Snowy Scene's of Northfield !

Some wintery scenes of the weather we are experiencing at the moment !

BBBBRRRRRRRRRRR ! ! !

Well it's the 5th of January , and the Met office are telling us that this is the most prolonged cold spell for over 30 years , and God , is it cold .
Snow has fallen daily since before Christmas and if it wasn't for the fact that i have to work in the stuff, it would be fair to say it was impressive . But now , a joke is a joke , and the novelty is wearing off rapidly.
I had entered the Chloanne embryo's for a sale on Thursday , but that has been postponed until later in the month. The catalogue was online and hopefully this should supply a link

http://www.wrightmanley.co.uk/agricultural-livestock/sale-catalogues/files/January(1)%20Club%202010.pdf

The waiting game has started for Frankham Sept Storm Ethel , as her due date approaches, fingers crossed and all that !
The main herd themselves are doing away reasonably well , could do better i suppose but until the weather improves , there's little more i can ask them to do . They are actually averaging just under 29 ltr/hd/day , so all things considered , not bad .
We have just finished calving our latest batch of young heifers , which were in calf to the Aberdeen Angus bull. Whilst the last 2 batches have calved down fairly easily to this bull , the last batch have involved more assisted calvings than i would have hoped for , and as a result of this we are looking into getting rid of the Angus bull and just continuing to use our black and white young bull , Chloanne Hannover !
The snow is playing havoc with trying to get staff here to work , and it's just anybodies guess as to when this cold snap will ease.I suppose it is healthier for the livestock than the usual wet , damp conditions , and hopefully it will thaw GRADUALLY so as to spare me the job of dealing with burst pipes next week. We have around 300,000 gallons of slurry waiting to be spread on the grass , but as it's not the best practice to spread in the snow , we are waiting for a break in the weather.