What a wild month of stormy weather it has been. Between wind, rain, snow, sleet and hail, I think we’ve seen everything but the sun. Hopefully that’ll make an appearance this month, as signs of spring are already in the air with the first primroses spotted last week.

All we need now is some heat and dry weather to allow a bit of soakage around the country.

Luckily, despite having heavy soil on the majority of our farm, we live on a hill, so disruption with flooding was minimal. With that said, our usual aim of having stock out by the first week of April may have been set back a week or two. Slurry spreading is also likely to be later than usual this year, though we have a few weeks of storage to play around with yet.

The plan is to empty the tank and spread everything in spring using the dribble bar, as it’s one of our selected GLAS options. While we haven’t noticed a huge difference using it, with the current focus on lowering emissions in all farming sectors, our much-loved splash-plate is likely to be an outdated manner of spreading in future.

Weaning

Two June heifer calves had to be weaned recently, which threw a small spanner in the works as normally we’d wean late calves in the calving pens, with access to a couple of fields around the shed.

Despite these fields being shored in the summer, with the heavy rainfall they’re still holding a lot of water, and presently home to a bull who certainly wouldn’t mind two heifers joining him. As I’m currently trying to keep his mind on halter training instead of the ladies, we decided to wean the heifers inside.

Our original plan was to close them in the creep area behind the slats. On paper, it seemed a workable solution. The two heifers (a Belgian Blue and a Limousin) are very quiet, as they have been handled each day all winter.

But little did we know the Blue heifer had aspirations of showjumping and, worried she’d get injured after breaching herself on a gate, we decided to split the pen and leave them on the slats beside the cows. So far so good, though ‘Black Beauty’ has received her first strike on the docility scale!

The aforementioned bull has been well-behaved so far, bar a dislike for his water and feed tubs. Every so often, I’ll hear the grating sound of a metal feed tub being pushed around the yard and as for the water barrel, I’ve given it up as missing, presumed flattened. He’s only 11 months, so I’m putting it down to a bovine teenage phase, as he’s quite mannerly otherwise.

Two retired hens are also keeping him company out the field and while he’s prone to occasionally chasing them, I thought I was seeing things one morning when he decided to lick one instead. I’m still not entirely sure if the hen or the bull was more confused afterwards.

Calving

Calving has yet to kick off here, hence the bull’s late eviction from the calving pens. We’re expecting two calves in March, followed by the remainder in April and early May. While it’s nice to have early calves to sell in September, we’ve found April-calving works best, as we’re able to let them out as they arrive. Otherwise, it can be very labour-intensive housing calves for a couple of months in a small shed like ours.

For the last few weeks, all cows are getting pre-calver minerals and iodine, as I’ve found this has helped avoid lazy calves in recent years. Although there’s nothing like trying to train a calf to suck in the freezing cold at three in the morning to teach anybody patience.

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