Breeding season kicked off last Friday with the first bull out among the heifers.

After two seasons where sickness or injury has resulted in a fertility slip involving a bull, I’m hoping this will be third time lucky.

Bull power will be used, with a second bull going to the out-farm this year. One will stay with the heifers and the other will be with the first- and second-calvers. At least if something goes wrong with one, there will be instant back-up.

As the herd is currently restricted with TB, there will be two spare bulls on the home block. It’s not what I planned but it has to be dealt with.

The pedigree heifers and cows were weighed at the end of March as part of the ICBF whole-herd recording programme. One who was calved a month weighed 402kg. That’s too light in some people’s eyes but she has a good calf under her and has displayed two heats since weighing. The others were around the 450kg mark.

I don’t lose much sleep on heifers hitting weight targets. Once they are all displaying heats that suits me. They can grow on grass. There’s not much point having big fancy heifers that are not fertile.

Maybe I should have weighed them all and not just the pedigrees but time wasn’t available to do a non-essential job like that and I’d prefer to leave the scales in the calving shed to get the birth weights. They wouldn’t have been in their best condition at the end of March but they were convenient.

It’s a one-man operation to get stock into the two yards near me but there’s a much bigger workload on the out-farm so yard work is kept to a minimum there.

Once they are beyond weaning, heifers and cows normally aren’t weighed until September. All the early calved heifers went to the out-farm a few weeks ago and all had displayed heats on a diet of grass alone and all calves are thriving well.

CAP submissions

I was a little surprised at first to see 92% of the individuals who made submissions to the CAP reform survey were not farmers. But as I processed the thought, it made more sense. The vast majority of EU citizens contribute to CAP and if you are investing in something then it’s only natural to have a say. In an Irish context, we need a rethink of how we use it. The value of the CAP isn’t seen until you travel to rural areas outside the EU.

Outside eyes are helpful to give us some perspective. An overseas visitor here put it well when they said if there was no CAP in Europe, cities and social welfare would be under severe pressure as opportunities wouldn’t be available in rural areas.

You could argue that they are lacking as it is. Rural Ireland has constantly evolved socially over the years. If you travel through upland areas you see old abandoned farms and houses.

I see it locally. Planning permission is difficult to secure for young people who wish to remain in the area.

More telling is what’s happening in the GAA. When I was in secondary school in Clonakilty, there were seven separate underage GAA clubs. Now only two of these operate on their own.

As uncomfortable as it might sound to some members, within the next decade there will be GAA clubs forced to amalgamate at adult level and in some parts of the country more than two will have to join up.

Time doesn’t stand still, so you must either evolve or disappear.