I could have continued where I left off with two weeks ago, as small issues continue to plague me.

A heifer got a dose of photosynthesis so bad that she was unable to see for a few days. The fencer issue that broke my heart turned out to be a case of the lights were on but no one was home. Repairs revealed there was an internal connection that had come apart.

The dehorner broke just after I had all the calves in the crush after getting an anaesthetic and painkiller. The words used in reaction to this discovery are best not printed.

An old electric dehorner was resurrected with the help of a gas drum and blow torch and a decision was made not to buy a replacement. I’ll come back to that later.

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

The paddock that held the out-wintered cows was reseeded using the stitching method. This got a mix of grass, clover, chicory and plantain. It’s an on-farm experiment that started last year when I used the mix on some paddocks. That is starting to show more prominently this year so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

While Murphy and his law were plaguing me, I was fortunate enough to get a run of 25 unassisted calvings in a row. The run was broken by a set of premature twins. The first landed perfectly but the second needed a small bit of help. When standing, the smallest was just above my kneecap but they are a super pair to thrive now.

They weighed 18kg and 21kg respectively and, combined, are roughly the average size of calves born here over the last few years so hopefully this won’t knock too much out of the cow.

Calving is down to single figures now and the end is in sight. For the first time since 1996, there were Angus and Hereford calves born on the farm.

The reasoning behind this is two-fold. One, to introduce polled genetics and two, to see if we can get cattle that will get a better fat score at finishing with fewer inputs. The fat score in the bulls for the last two years wasn’t up to the standard of previous years, so it was worth trying something.

During the breeding season last year, AI was used on the cows for the first three weeks. The bulls used were homozygous polled Simmental and Hereford. Angus wasn’t in the initial plan but was used as I wanted to reserve the polled Simmental for the pedigree cows and I ran out of other polled straws. There’s only a pair of Angus calves but their size surprised me. Both were over 54kg. My initial reaction was that this bull is probably more suited to photographs than for using on heifers.

Ideally, I would have got a run of polled heifer calves to use as replacements. Unfortunately, I’ve only ended up with one polled Simmental heifer but there are a few polled Hereford heifers.

Murphy’s law struck again as my polled heifer from last year developed horns over the winter. The result of her genomics tagging revealed she was sired by a different bull.

I’m sorry there aren’t more polled calves about. Once they got their initial pneumonia vaccine they were put out in the field and “off with ye lads”.

It will take a few years yet but long-term, polled is the way the farm will be going so there’s no need to purchase another dehorner.