This has been a month with its fair share of excitement, coming from all quarters, with some events
more welcome than others.
At the beginning of February the younger Fords readily accepted an offer of free tickets, from our
feed supplier Countrywide, to see Wales play Ireland in the Six Nations Rugby Tournament. Being
Welsh born and bred Liz was hugely excited at the prospect, it’s just a pity that Countrywide
couldn’t provide the perfect result too!
Though Matt enjoyed the rugby, it’s probably fair to say that he has been more preoccupied with his
acquisition of some new technology for the farm. This month an eagerly awaited package from
Australia arrived, containing a chip which reads the electronic ear tags which we have been using
on all our heifers since last summer. Being pretty handy with technology, as our gadget-laden
parlour demonstrates, Matt has enjoyed constructing a “wonder wand”, using this chip and a
Tupperware box, which will make identifying cows very easy. This home-made device, which
amounts to a tenth of the price of most other EID readers, will hopefully bring practical benefits in
the future.

Another event that could be called exciting, miraculous, and perhaps, more to the point,
inconvenient, was the tipping over of an articulated lorry full of sand. The lorry was struggling to
tip its load, when the whole thing started to topple, causing the body to shear off the chassis and
take out the rape meal bin. The bin, which was on a raised gantry, then collapsed as well, bringing
all its weight plus 30 tonnes of rape meal onto the sand lorry and the unfortunate skid-steer, which
was parked nearby. All in all, a bit of a mess, but it was truly a miracle that no people or animals
were injured. The clear up, both physical and administrative, continues!
Returning to more routine matters, the spring block has been calving down well. We’ve had over 65
calves already this year, bringing a helpful boost to our milk production, as the bulk of our summer
calvers are now passed the peak of their lactation. These beef calves seem to be doing well, we’ve
been feeding them large volumes of warmed dump milk, which has really got them flying. We’ve
been fortunate to find a buyer who will take them at an agreed fixed price, which keeps both parties
happy.
We’ve also been able to pump enough slurry to manage the level of our slurry lagoon, injecting in
order to reduce run off and maximise nutrient usage by the grassland. Unfortunately the weather has
not been good enough to drop the lagoon level as much as we would have hoped. However, we
have had a few nice days, hinting at the first signs of spring – dare we get excited that there is more
to come soon?