It’s hard to believe that calving has started again. The heifers began a week ago and almost a third of them have already calved down.

These heifers have been outwintered on barley stubbles, on a diet of straw, silage and a pre-calver mineral, and they only came inside a week before they started to calve. When we brought them in they had a body condition score higher than I would have liked, but so far they are calving down OK. They have thrived while outside and are much fitter than if they had been lying around a cattle shed.

The cows are due to start calving on 1 April, but we still have 100 outside finishing off the crop of stubble turnips and rape, which they have strip-grazed all winter.

The great weather this winter has made this an easy job. The field was so dry that often when I went to move the electric fence I was able to go in my boots, rather than wellies and leggings.

Having more cows and heifers outwintered has also saved us a lot of straw, which we didn’t have due to the dry weather last summer.

We have been trying to be as conservative as possible with bedding, and hopefully we will have enough to see us through until the cows have gone back outside.

Autumn calvers

In December, we put 48 heifers away with two bulls for five weeks. Normally we don’t have any autumn calvers, but these will hopefully start at the beginning of October.

That will give us the opportunity to try out our new Aberdeen Angus bull, which we purchased at the Stirling sales last October. They were scanned 35 days after the bulls were removed, and all but one is in-calf.

Barley

After the dry winter weather, March arrived with a deluge of rain and so any plans of early spring barley sowing were abandoned.

With the forecast having improved, hopefully we can get started on sowing the 460 acres of spring barley. Spring barley varieties are to include Laureate, Diablo and Concerto. Laureate and Diablo are being grown on seed contracts, with Concerto on a malting barley contract.

Easter

The Easter holidays are almost upon us, so both of our sons, Andrew and Harry, will be at home for a couple of weeks and will be able to help with cows and arable work.

Although I imagine they would both prefer to get on the new Fendt tractor than to be putting cows and calves outside.

The tractor has been set up with full RTK GPS to sow the grain. We are hoping it will be more reliable than the one it replaced, which was the most unreliable tractor I have ever owned. Thankfully, for the three years we owned it, it was still covered by the manufacturer’s warranty, so it didn’t cost anything in repairs.