We have just finished the first three weeks of calving so the pressure has eased slightly in the yard this week.

We calved 200 cows or two-thirds of the herd in that first three weeks and, with 10 fresh calves to start off and three or four heifers to introduce to the milking herd every day, it can get very intense for that short period of time.

We have a good team in the yard to get through all the work and a good system to keep calves moved on away from the calving area every day. This year we used some redundant stables as a sort of halfway house between the calving box and the calf sheds with the computerised feeders.

The calves were picked up each morning with a crate on the front loader to keep lifting and carrying to a minimum. They were moved to a freshly cleaned out, disinfected and bedded stable and the oldest batch in the next stable was moved on to the auto-feeder or into the pen for beef-calves for sale.

The stables are very warm and sheltered for that all-important first few days and it gave the calves a great start in life.

Not everyone has a few stables lying idle in the yard, but a section of a loose shed could easily be penned out with big bales of straw for those first few weeks to get the same effect, with plenty of comfort and no draughts.

The main herd of cows has been grazing day and night since calving which is a huge bonus both for workload around the yard and for cow health. The freshly calved cows that are being held out of the tank have been run in a separate herd for the last couple of weeks and have been in some nights but out grazing every day as well.

This fresh herd probably peaked at around 50 cows, but we have it down under a single row now or 20 cows. This fresh group get a pick of silage for the first few days, but the main herd has been offered very little silage since calving. We still haven’t opened the maize silage pit and we will just hold tough for the rest of February now and see what March brings and then see if or when we need to dip into it.

We have a good stock of silage bales still to get us through a small pinch and with grass covers at record levels across the farm, we might try to carry this pit of maize into the summer or even into next year and gain back some of the cost we were hit with last spring and summer.

We could end up feeding the maize heavily right through March or April yet so we will just see what happens and see what hand we are dealt by the weather over the next few months. We will have 90% of the herd calved and milking by the first week of March so things can turn around very quickly from there.

We could almost throw the calendar in the bin as it’s a real year to manage the farm to suit what you see in front of you and to adjust to what happens as you go. “What we’ve always done,” doesn’t apply this spring. We’ll see where that takes us over the next few weeks but the rest of February looks good and we’ll welcome every day of uninterrupted grazing with open arms.