Calving is well under way on the farm this week with over 70 calved and numbers climbing daily.

We were out with small numbers of fresh cows day and night for the last two weeks. They were doing little or no damage, but with weather taking a step backwards over the last few days, we will need to manage this a bit more over the coming weeks.

We will move to on-off grazing when necessary and the cows will probably spend a bit more time on cubicles if the weather gets much worse.

We spread 30 units of urea across the whole farm last week, with ground in exceptional shape for the time of year.

Grass growth and grass cover on the farm continues to power ahead of any other spring and even with the rain arriving now, fresh grazing ground is still in exceptional condition when it’s dry overhead.

We just need to manage the gaps a bit more now and not leave cows standing around on wet days.

We will move on the first few bull calves soon and hopefully this will help to keep the workload under control. We also have a new man, who we took on through the local Farm Relief Service, to do night calving for the next six weeks to take some of the pressure off and let everybody get a good night’s sleep.

It also helps to keep the hours worked at a normal level through the spring, rather than having people working hard during the day and trying to stay awake to watch cows for the night afterwards.

With numbers climbing on the farm, it’s important to make sure that nobody gets burnt out trying to do too much, so the plan is to continue with the night duty every night for the first six weeks of calving.

The cost will be shared with a neighbouring farmer from next week on, when they start calving as well. The job isn’t a busy one but is very important to us, as it allows us to switch off for a few hours at 8pm. We will get a phone call if any major problem arises during the night.

The calves are tagged, fed and minded for the night. The cubicle shed is watched as well as the calving box. All details are recorded in a notebook, including time of calving, calving difficulty and when the calf was fed.

The yard will be set up for milking in the morning. If necessary the milking herd can be brought in after a few hours grazing, at 9pm or 10pm. Any spare time can be spent training calves to the automatic calf feeder, feeding meal to calves or washing calf feeders.

We will also provide a dinner for everyone working on the farm through the spring and hopefully everybody will get enough time off every week to get some rest.

We will all work hard for the next six weeks, but nobody will be under too much pressure. Hopefully these arrangements will help us to keep on top of paperwork as well and keep calves moved on out of the yard early.

A lot of people ask us about expansion and the extra workload that it creates on farm in the spring. With the extra numbers of cows on the farm, we now can employ someone at night to reduce workload there. We also have people working on the farm with different skill sets, who can specialise a bit more in different areas.

Anyone can take a day or a week off now and someone will step in for them. The organisation and communication of everything is the biggest challenge now and trying to keep improving on our processes as we grow.