Hope this finds you all well.
We have now dried off all the cows (on the 12th of May). We finished the season doing just over 64,000 solids. Not a bad effort, but still short of what I wanted. I got lulled into a false sense of security with the last two good autumns so milked on longer than I probably should have. This meant that cover was below what it should have been and therefore we needed to keep things quite tight feeding the cows. Fortunately, the cows are pretty much all in calving condition so there is no need to put on much weight. We have a reasonable of supplement so at the moment are using that to slow the round and try and grow as much grass as we can. The up side has been the cows have dried off well and quickly. The night we dried off the cows it rained heavily, as you can see by the photo so we had to put the cows on the yard overnight. We gave our cows Teatseal as well as dry cow treatment so hopefully that will have stopped any infections.
The runoff is also relatively tight feed wise so I’ve been getting rid of stock while I can. I’m trying to sell all the young deer and off loaded some sheep to make things easier. Had thought about leaving the heifers down there and using the silage that is there to feed them. But I decided to bring them home and feed the silage at home so no tractor trips there every second day.
I finally managed to get the last fodder beet planted on the 15th of May. Looks like we are going to have to get by with the crop paddocks out for most of the winter. I decided to leave the repairs to the water damage till next autumn as it’s too wet to try now and it was more important to get seed in. My paddock that was planted in annual grass got hit a bit when I sprayed the paddock next door so had to replant some of that as well.
I’ve managed to start fencing, although it’s hard to get a decent run at it with weather and other jobs interfering. Still, have got 300m of fence line in with all the posts rammed and just wires and gates to do. Hope to start again tomorrow. The next section to do is a little bit of the stream left that’s meant to be done by the first of June.
I’m trying to get back on my bike regularly but its proving to be a challenge, so I’ve got desperate and put my old bike on the trainer and sit still and go nowhere for an hour each weekday night. I just love it (not).
Fishing still seems to be a distant dream, but I’m still dreaming. Got to keep sane somehow.
Hope all is going along ok for everyone. Catch you next month.