Within the space of a week, I had experienced the annual TB test and the latest Bord Bia audit.

While how I maintain my records and yard means I have an element of control over the audit, the TB test is out of my hands. Both are events that can cause a bit of stress on some farms. Testing is the one event I dread. Thankfully, the herd went clear.

I decided to keep the cull heifers indoors and give them a bale to tie them over between Monday and Thursday.

They caused me a small bit of bother in the round-up and reading morning can be taxing enough without spending hours dealing with uncooperative stock.

I had to explain their presence in the shed to two visitors from Queensland who my brother had met while working out there a few years ago. After they laughed at the Irish take on a dry spell, they mentioned the Australian programme to rid the country of bovine TB. That evening, I did a bit of research and found that the Australian government ran a TB eradication program from 1970 to 1997.

Australia, a much bigger island than ours with a cattle population of about 26m, eradicated TB in 27 years. The Irish one began in a voluntary capacity in 1954 when the cattle population was 4.5m head and became compulsory in 1962 and with the national herd gone up over 2m in the intervening time, our TB eradication scheme still goes on.

After reading the herd at home, I set about dosing and rearranging groups. I split the bull and heifer calves and the stock bulls were removed from the cows. That should see an end to 2018 calving by the first days of May.

With all back out to grass, I set off to round up the younger cows and replacement heifers on the rented ground with my parents and brother. Moving stock on the road there requires more labour.

Faecal egg counts revealed that calves on the out-farm had a worm egg count that was double those at home. Provided all went clear, the plan was to use a pour-on on the calves and heifers there.

Many may not be fans of pour-ons but I prefer to use them on younger stock rather than injections. I have found that it helps to decrease the amount of stressful scenarios they have to go through.

By afternoon, the weather took on a four seasons in two hours approach and forced a change of plan.

I ended up getting sunburnt and soaked. Due to the rain, we had to revert to using drenches so a levacide was used to cover both flukes, as well as worms.

A hook gun worked well on the heifers and first calvers but was a bit more challenging on the calves.

Dosing

One group had to be dosed while the vet was there as there wasn’t enough room to recycle the groups around.

I had told him of this the first day so he could allow for this when planning other calls on reading day. I did my transition year work experience in that practice and discovered why vets were usually late getting to calls. The reason is down to words that vets probably dread to hear: “While you’re here, you might look at...”

I recall one call-out to a sick calf ending up in about six lame cows, six cows needing a washout and putting down an old dog. It’s better for everyone to let a vet know what lies ahead.