I thought our breeding season had gone well, but in the last while, we’ve had three different animals come back in heat again.

It just goes to show you can never be sure a cow is in calf until you see two feet, and even then you can’t be sure of getting it out.

Two of the cows are pedigree Limousins so they have managed to avoid the chop but one cantankerous Salers has not made the grade.

Always awkward to work with, she also required a backing bar in the crush, which was a first for us. I think our AI man despaired a little bit each time he came to visit her.

Speaking of visitors, I became very suspicious one of the days at the start of the month when my father came to see me with a very sheepish look on his face.

He had managed to lock the keys of both our machinery sheds into one of them, leaving his jacket, complete with keys, on top of the quad.

While this wouldn’t normally be a problem if you have access to tools – however, all our tools happened to be locked in as well.

Spare keys

A brief examination of the door showed our best way in was to either break the lock or remove the door sheeting.

Scrounging around in the slatted shed I found a couple of items to help take the sheeting off the door, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to find myself breaking into our own machinery shed, pliers and paint roller as my main tools.

I can only imagine what the neighbors were thinking as they drove past while I was trying to fish out the jacket on the quad with the handle of the roller.

It’s our own fault that we don’t have a second set of keys, but the spares were also lost years ago and never replaced. I think it’s high time we rectified that.

Terrible fright

Grass growth has remained high, some fields have actually had better growth in the last month than we had in May though there isn’t much feeding value in it with all the rain we’ve had.

In the local area around here there’s been numerous cases of blackleg and tetany so just something to keep an eye out for.

We’ve never vaccinated here for blackleg as there’s never been a case of it, but it’s always something to be wary of regardless.

One of our cows gave us a terrible fright one morning as she managed to slip into a drain overnight. Only for it’s a shallow drain and she’s a sprightly young cow, it could have been a very different story.

Sigh of relief

On the veterinary note, our annual herd test is scheduled for next week so hopefully all will go well and we will get a clear result. At least then we can breathe a sigh of relief, sell on the excess stock and plan our weanling sales.

Originally I’d planned to bring a calf to Carrick fatstock sales so it was with sadness I heard it was called off. It’s always a great day out for a farmer, one of the more social occasions despite the rugby scrum at the ringside.

Poor ‘Texel’ has managed to escape a day out, so he’ll be for the mart now along with the rest of them. Hopefully we can get back on track next year with showing, though it’s probably typical I won’t have a calf good enough for it.

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