Spring Is Here ? ! ?

Well here we are , May 10th , the cows are out both day and night , yet the temperatures of late have been terrible to say the least . Grass growth has been fairly good despite the cold , although I can't see us starting the silage cut as early as last year .
The cows are still getting a token gesture of TMR , pretty much just as much as they can eat after both milkings, at least it takes the edge off their appetites when they go out !
So it's been more than a while since the last update and we have been busier than ever .
The cows all got their annual Tb test in Feb, thankfully all passing again .At the same time they are all tested for johnnes and also tested for our health scheme , so to date we are Johnnes, Bvd and Lepto accredited, a status that we are keen to hang on to .
As mentioned in the last post , the classifier was in , in early feb , it was a good visit .The Chloanne girls did very well .
They are now ;
Chloanne Webster Gracious EX92(3)
Chloanne Goldwyn Gracious 3 GP83
Chloanne Spooky Gracious G75
Chloanne Tulip Gracious GP83
Chloanne Goldwyn Gracious 2 VG88
Chloanne Hanno Gracious VG85
Chloanne Goldwyn Gracious VG89
Frankham Sept Storm Ethel VG85

So all in all , i am getting there .
Notable in her abscence from the above list is Chloanne Magna Gracious, who calved on the 8th March. Sadly after a day of looking a bit under the weather , she became a classic "downer" cow and never really recovered . She was put down , not an easy deciscion to make , but one which was the right thing to do for the cow .
In mid feb , i also lost a 3 month old heifer , Chloanne Planet Gracious , reason unknown, that was totally unexpected and all the more gaulling as i was away for the week in question , so have no real answers as to what happened .
Replacements for the Chloanne 'herd' are very thin on the ground at present , with 301, 202 and 302 all having bull calves .Hopefully this heifer drought will ease soon .
On a better note the first Chloanne Gallagher calves are now on the ground , i think at the time of posting there is 19 daughters in 10 herds.
It is quite a bizarre feeling to see offspring from one of your bulls , being born on someone elses farm .

This year we are thinking of replacing some of the cubicles in the cow sheds. This is long overdue and hopefully for next winter , the girls will be lying in the lap of luxury, in better sized beds for the modern Holstein cow.

As you can see from the main page of the blog , i can see when and where people have visited this site . It is amazing to think that people from Usa, Canada , Moscow , India and all over the Uk have clicked from Twitter, YouTube, or even just Googled "Chloanne" . I really must make more of an effort to keep this blog up to date , so here's hoping !