Time to go fishing – Brian Frost

The last few months have been busy, with lots of things to get done on the farm, but finally AB has finished – the bulls are out, crops are in and Frostie can go fishing – well when the weather plays ball and the wind dies down!

We finished six weeks of AB on Monday. This year we changed how we would tackle the mating season yet again and chose to do no intervention for the cows, as we will milk those that are not in calf through the winter. The stats were down because of this, but we have still ended up with 95% of the herd inseminated in six weeks.

We are still slightly ahead of last year in production. We are on a 20 day round, with our cover at 2200, not really what we would like to have at this stage, but the cover is still rising.

On the milking platform the turnips are planted and up. This year we have sown 13.5 ha turnips, compared to the usual 10.5 ha. The increase in area is due to redoing fescue paddocks planted two years ago because of poor results (caused by Poa annua problems).

On the runoff we have planted 16 ha of maize, which is also up and growing at a great rate. This is the first time we have grown our own maize so many hours were spent going through different options to decide which would suit us best.

We have been able to make 67 bales of baleage on the runoff too – the fescue paddocks we put in on this block have done really well so we have been able to take a cut off them and others.

Our manager’s wife had time back in South Africa visiting her sick father, so Frostie has been working full time milking and looking after the runoff for the last 3+ weeks, including while the rugby was on, so we are very thankful for the MySky recordings. The house is a lot quieter in the mornings without the 20 or so people here for the rugby and breakfast. Frostie is now ready to take the boat out fishing, but not before he has taken our lot, and all their friends, water skiing a few times. The cold water of the lake doesn’t seem to stop them from wanting to go out. Nothing like fish and chips at the lake in the sun – Mrs. Frostie just wishes the wind would go away or it would get warmer!