Last week seemed to be particularly hectic, with two members of staff on holiday (one at each farm) and a sheep inspection at both Ardmiddle and Mains of Culsh. The daily workload still has to be done.

We started AIing on 1 October, in both the milking herd and the maiden heifers. Some days, it felt that I was not doing anything else but inseminating and heat-detection.

One group of heifers is at a rented steading three miles from home, which are checked twice a day. Tail paint is used as an aid for heat detection. We were using a marker crayon but found that some of the heifers were licking it off so have changed to a bright orange spray marker which only comes off when the heifers are mounting each other, so it is much easier to spot which ones are bulling.

The biggest day was when 15 cows/heifers were inseminated and hopefully there will not to be too many repeat services. The move away from all-year-round calving to a late summer/autumn block will concentrate the workload at certain times of the year.

There are 20 cows left to calve, with the last one expected on 23 December. Eleven of these are still grazing outside quite happily between the rain showers.

All our calves, bulls and heifers are reared in individual calf hutches. They receive 4l of colostrum as soon as possible after birth and then 3l of whole milk twice daily till weaning at seven weeks. When we are fully organic, they will get milk until they are 12 weeks old. They are also vaccinated against ringworm and pneumonia. The calves are weighed at birth and weaning and their daily liveweight gain (DLWG) calculated. For the 80 calves weighed to date their DLWG has been 0.92 kg/day, with a zero mortality rate.

I feel that our calves are very healthy and happy in their individual hutches and can see the other calves in adjacent hutches for social interaction. One supermarket is insisting that their farmer suppliers rear calves in pairs from birth, and from our experience here and many other dairy farmers throughout the country it would be a retrograde step to ban the rearing of calves in individual pens and hutches.

The tups went in with the ewes on 15 October, three tups each with their own group of ewes. Nearly everything has a yellow bottom so the teaser Cheviot tup certainly seems to bring them on together. Tomorrow’s job is to change the colour of the keel to red and hope that we don’t get many turning red. There is plenty of grass for the ewes this autumn so nutritionally they have had a good start.

It is good to have the lighter mornings for a short while after the clocks go back, but with the rain the last couple of nights it certainly feels that winter is here. Glenshee has even had its first snow of the winter.