7 days off ! !

Today is my last day at work before an extremely well earned break of 7 days . Prior to this I was last off in February , and prior to that , God knows when . I am scheduled to take 28 days holiday a year , last year I ended up carrying 5 days over and got paid for 14 , so in reality I only took 9 days . So I started this year with 33 , and ended up carrying over 24 . I'd like to think that in the weeks and months to come , this shortfall in time off can be reversed . It's certainly not good for anyone to work these types of shifts , especially when a working week can easily be in excess of 75 - 80 hours !
Anyhow , hopefully when I come back I will find the herd in a content and happy mood . They are now in at nights , whilst still grazing what grass is left through the day ! This is just an exercise project rather that anything else . Most of their feed is now getting fed through the Keenan mixer wagon . The milk has really dropped sharply this autumn , I think they really were out for too long at nights , and this lost milk is proving really hard to get back on them . Hopefully , by the time I come back , they might even be in through the day and then they will be on a totally balanced diet for the rest of the winter !
The new cubicles got finished on time , and I am so pleased with them . the cows have been exploring them , and so far most seem to be prepared to try them without much fuss. The main things I am noticing about them is that the cows are lying far better than they did in the old style cubicles that we had , and this in turn is helping to keep the beds so much cleaner . Hopefully this will continue through the winter too .It would have been nice to have posted a few pictures of them on this site , but , alas , my digital camera is broken , and my phone is away getting repaired too , so I can't even post anything on Twitter . As soon as one of them is fixed I will post some pic's of the cubicles and other projects that we have being doing through the summer !