With only around half the herd in milk at the moment, we’re whizzing through the milkings, and good thing too with all the other jobs we’ve got going on.
First cut silage came off well, though a little later than we would have liked. Weather conditions were good, so hopefully it will feed well when we’re trying to get the cows back in calf again.
Preparations for the calving season are underway, with the equipment all washed and ready, and pens set up waiting to welcome the new additions. We’re having a team meeting on the first of July, for our vets and everyone who will be involved in the calving this year, to make sure we’re all on the same page. Of course some cows and heifers won’t have got the memo, there’s already been one premature calving to remind us of what’s to come!

As well as all the normal preparations, we’re also doing some work at Place Farm, our youngstock unit. The main farm has always been our base for calf rearing in the past, it’s where the cows calve, and where the calves stay for the first few weeks of their life. When the heifers are a bit older we move them to our youngstock unit, but we still mix up the milk powder at the farm and then transport it down. However, we’re just about to start work on installing a water heater there, and improving the ventilation by raising the roof, and though we still plan to keep the youngest calves at the home farm, we will soon have a much more self-contained heifer rearing unit, which will hopefully make everything much more efficient.
While we’re at it we’re also updating some cubicles at Place Farm, as we also keep our bulling heifers there, from their first serving till they are turned out in the spring. We have done quite a lot of work on this unit already, and with this last set of new cubicles and the changes to the heifer rearing facilities, it just keeps on improving.
Back at the home farm we are also putting new cubicles in an old straw yard. We hope to eliminate the use of straw yards for fresh calvers and mastitis cows, and the new cubicles will help our stocking rates. We’re trying to use foresight as much as possible, to make sure that the work we are doing will fit in with any future developments, this new use of space will help us to be able to run separate groups, which we may wish to look into at some point.

Our herdsman once said that he would have to write his memoirs one day, and that they would be called “Milking on a Building Site.” As you can tell, he’s not totally exaggerating, but at times we must invest and expand in order to use our resources to their fullest potential. At other times, there is a real skill in using what you have, and really making it tick. This is an ongoing debate in the farming world, between low input and high input units, between ambitious farmers and careful bankers, between fathers and sons. I suppose there’s no wrong or right, there’s just doing what you do well, and that’s our aim. So, with calving around the corner we prepare and improve all we can, and we get ready to make it work.