We try to calve the herd in two blocks - February to March in spring, August to October in autumn.

The aim is to have two-thirds spring, one-third autumn, but because the spring serving wasn’t as successful to as it should have been, there are now too many in the autumn group. We are just starting to serve this group and the plan is to use AI on the top 50% for six weeks and a beef bull on the rest.

For this we have just purchased an Aberdeen Angus bull. But for the next six weeks I have to separate him out from a bunch of homebred bulls whenever I want to serve a cow. This places urgency in rebuilding the bull pen which we lost when we rebuilt the new cubicles.

We use oestrus strips, or "scratchitts" as we call them, with checks being made every four hours during daylight hours. We do have CCTV on the herd linked to our phones which should give nighttime coverage, but so far this has not been as successful as I would have hoped.

At the moment the cows are coming bulling at a phenomenal rate of four or five a day. The nutritionist says that the diet must obviously be correct.

Sneaky deal

It is interesting how quickly Boris was on the phone to Brussels as Trump’s demise seemed certain. This pleased me greatly as he would no longer be able to do a cheap food deal with the US. This is, I am told, because Biden has not forgotten his Irish roots, and will not do anything to disadvantage Irish agriculture.

Unfortunately, Boris was also quietly working behind the scenes on a trade deal with Canada which appears to have been successful. However, this may be bad for British agriculture, although in Canada the purchase price of quota is so high, it could be a deterrent to their dairy herd expanding to meet the export market.

Impressive systems

Many years ago I was fortunate to make a trip to Canada and was very impressed with their agricultural systems. The farms we visited were family farms, all second- or third-generation European immigrants. Because the farm incomes were so secure they would borrow 100% and only pay the interest. The cattle were big and far more robust than the US Holsteins. Before quota systems were introduced into Britain, there was a Scottish Farmer journalist who continually advocated a quota system for Britain, similar to the one they had in Canada.

The difference between a Canadian system and the one we ended up with here was that theirs was based on consumption, whereas ours was based on production minus 10%, which still wasn’t enough to bring supplies into balance and secure a decent milk price. I was told that in Canada they took 100 farmers’ costs, chose two in the middle, added on a profit and that was the milk price. What a marvellous system.

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