My calendar seems in a bit of disarray at the moment as we work ourselves through 2 weeks of days on, days off, days on, days off, causing me to struggle a bit trying to remember what day it is. I do know that it’s ANZAC day today as this is such a well-advertised and poignant time in the life of our nation, and Easter has just been and gone, as is evident by the ever-diminishing basket of Easter eggs sitting in the middle of our dining room table. I am also aware that today is our wedding anniversary, many years of wedded bliss behind us now, the number a bit too scary to mention! I look back with a certain amount of smugness however, as the day we picked to get married is always going to be a national holiday, which is great in itself, but the real advantage in having an ANZAC day wedding is that it’s virtually impossible to forget our wedding anniversary. Haven’t forgotten yet, and long may it continue! To date, Bev has never missed out on being showered with all sorts of reminders of that memorable day, many years ago!! She certainly is a lucky woman!
As I wrote my last blog, we were celebrating some much-needed rainfall and looking forward to positive growth rates, and, if I remember correctly, I may have mentioned autumn silage, bloat, and the absence of facial eczema. I was right on one count, but one count only. Fortunately, we have seen no evidence of eczema to date which is great news. However, growth has been slow as the rain was sporadic at best, and only in the last few days have we seen some really decent rain, and this, coupled with cooler days, is giving us hope that we still have time to lift covers going into winter while we carry on milking. No sign of bloat, which is great, but certainly no surplus grass to even think of autumn silage.
We were discussing milking frequency in my last blog as well. I wasn’t sure whether to consider 16-hour milking, or even once a day, and I was thinking that I must bring this up with Sam at some stage. That ‘some stage’ actually eventuated rather quickly owing to Sam reading my blog and front-footing the conversation! At least it means he reads it I guess! After much discussion, we decided that the only way of finding out is by trying, so we bit the bullet and went onto once a day milking. Now this is a big decision for me as we don’t normally do this until we are drying off. However, the cows were down to about 1.15 kg MS/cow/day so we thought that we wouldn’t lose much. I heeded some great advice I heard years ago from Pete Morgan. They always go onto OAD milking sometime in December, but they time it with a period that the cows go into really good grass, usually silage paddocks or the like. This gave me the confidence to make the decision, as we had been on basically a non-grass diet for a month or so but were just speeding up the round again as we had reasonable cover in front of us. Feeding grass again, plus maize and a PKE blend with a bit of canola, seemed to do the trick. We’ve been on OAD about a month now and although there was an initial drop in production, they did lift again and are still doing over 1 kg MS/cow/day. And boy are they in good condition! And is Sam happy! He’s got a bit more time to do other things on and off the farm now, and that’s got to be a good thing. We’re sitting on about a 65 day round and still feeding plenty of maize while we try and build the cover some more in anticipation of the heifers coming home shortly.
The long dry has resulted in a scarcity of winter grazing so we made the decision to buy a bit more maize in, as the heifers will be home earlier than usual and there may be more cows on at home prior to calving. We already had 250 tonnes of maize silage on hand after the harvest but another 50 tonnes came up nearby, so I just couldn’t resist. Maize on hand is like money in the bank, you can never have too much! And I don’t even work for Pioneer anymore! We used to always bring in some grass silage in spring but with the extra maize now I’m thinking that this won’t happen this year.
On the home front, we had an impending wedding when I wrote my last blog. I can happily say that this is now behind us and we have a happily married couple that were so fortunate to have a fantastic wedding day with all going extremely well. A big tick for that day to all involved.
Two down, one to go, although the ‘one to go’ has just today made the big move and left the nest for the second time, heading down to Wellington as she follows the ‘interested vet with the big dog’ (see previous blogs) and begins a new life down there. Never a dull moment in life especially when you have kids, no matter what age! Speaking of kids, daughter number one is about to produce grandchild number two, so it’s all a bit of a waiting game as to when this will happen. Nana is on standby for childminding and meals and all that stuff that nanas do, and I’ve made sure there’s a beer in the fridge, and a tipple in the cupboard, for when the need arises to celebrate the arrival of junior!
On that happy note, it’s about that time now, as the shadows lengthen and dusk draws near, for us to consider our plans for the evening. Seeing as I brought her a coffee in bed accompanied with an Easter egg, I’m guessing that my loving wife will no doubt have plans to take me out to dinner to celebrate and commemorate, both the ANZACs and our wedding day.
