It’s high time I sat down and wrote a blog. Since the weather is not so good I thought it may be a good time to write and put off going outside. It feels like nothing much has happened since the last blog. It seems like I’m on the go all day and barely get […]
The sun is shining as I write this, and that certainly has made life easier. In spite of the mud calving has gone really well with one cow to go, and one milk fever. The girls are currently producing 2.27 kg per day, with grass a little short they are also getting 3 kg silage […]
Last season was a good one to get behind us. Things were tough for a lot of the season, with too many floods and water sitting on the farm for too long leading to regrassing some areas six times. This meant we have taken a big production and financial hit. Also, council have come back […]
Being July, I am in the last throes of getting organised before the new season. The rubber ware has been replaced, but I still must repair cracks in the yard to keep the inspector happy. That is the problem with a 60 year old shed – the maintenance required to create the right environment to […]
The summer has been very kind to us. Regular rain and warm days created spring like conditions. At one stage we had a rotation length of 24 days and five paddocks shut up for silage. We cut three to get 64 bales of silage. We baled a bit early, so it was not quite dry […]
It’s Good Friday, the start of the Easter break. The sun’s still shining, the grass is still growing, and the cows are still milking. Pretty exciting huh? That part is great. I am a bit concerned, though, about one thing. The Easter Bunny and his mates had been living in the maize paddock not too […]
The summer rain has kept coming to grow the feed; however, with this has come the weeds, and the heat has certainly been making it difficult for the cows to reach the production levels we would have liked. We have had major weed problems, especially in the new grass paddocks that have been flooded many […]
2018 started with us flying from Israel to Hong Kong, so we were in the air for the New Year’s celebrations. On 16th December we flew to Israel with our extended family to enjoy a wonderful trip touring Israel, Palestine and Jordan, and then stopping in Hong Kong on the way back to NZ. This […]
Although the cows are milking well not all things are going to plan. The submission rate was 85%, close but no cigar. I still have two cows that are reluctant to cycle and as I do not intervene, I will just have to be patient. The girls are holding at 1.8 to 1.9 kg MS […]
At the moment I’m sitting in a motel in Queenstown on holiday. We have been to the Catlins for a memorial dedication to my sister and then visited friends who farm in Southland. The days were hot and sunny, although their grass doesn’t seem to have gone as stalky as ours. Everybody was saying how […]