“Well, how many this morning?”

More-often than not, initial break-time chatter at the office involves our breeding season.

Last-night’s game, cattle prices and the stalwart ‘weather’ have taken a backseat for now.

My brother and I take care of the morning heat detection, while Dad feeds the remaining bulls.

We use scratch-card patches, followed by tail-paint as aids.

In 40 days of breeding, 35 animals have been served. Ten ladies have passed the 21-day mark and retained their body-art, with one repeat so far.

Fields full of pink paint makes for happy mornings.

After a slow initial fortnight, we’ve been serving well over one a day. My target is a 60-day breeding season - with about 50 cows calving next spring.

There are 54 animals on our watch. The four cow cushion is my little elephant in the room.

No matter how hard we try, there are always 2 or 3 empty animals.

Our calves-per-cow graph is the one blotch on a HerdPlus report that I’m quietly content with.

We cull each year, but it feels almost sacrilegious when so much effort and planning goes into breeding our cows.

This year, the heat detection game has been upped. What is the point of crowing about weaning 400 kg calves, if a fifth of their aunties are lying idle? With the figure currently in the mid eighties, time will tell whether it does indeed climb up – I’m discreetly confident.

I’m dreaming of a white summer next year.

After killing the first half of our 16-month bulls last week, any hesitancy about what sires we should be using has been quashed.

Able-bodied cows will get LGL (CH) straws from now on. Ten bulls were slaughtered last week. They came to a U-, 3- as a group.

Average carcass weight was 393 kg, at 15.1 months of age. To achieve this, 1.25 t of meal went through each beast since December, with maize meal being the staple (40%). Carcasses (4) from LGL averaged 425 kg.

Four more carcasses were from ‘maternal’ LM and SM sires and averaged 365 kg. It’s still good performance, and while their average age was a fortnight younger, 60 kg of quality-assured carcass on the steer grid cannot be ignored.

If sexed semen gained momentum, the influx of dairy-cross bulls would make things very interesting for the suckler man – not in a good way either. This type of animal is just what the UK market wants. But at the same time, if sexed-straws from certain Charolais bulls became available, it’d be rude not to dabble.