The barley was eventually harvested, after a stressful period of studying the weather in search of the ideal window. Considering the hammering it got, it yielded quite well. The straw was baled and removed from the field as soon as it was fit to do so, and in its place we planted a mixture of redstart, along with leafy turnip.

The ewes have been shorn and normally I would be heading to the Ploughing this week to meet up with friends

This has been done with the aim of keeping ewes outside for as long as possible over the winter. The ewes have been shorn and normally I would be heading to the Ploughing this week to meet up with friends and have a look at the different products available for farming. Hopefully I, along with everyone else, will be looking forward to attending it this time next year when the threat of COVID-19 has subsided – fingers crossed.

Rams

I plan on using the ram effect to synchronise the natural service ewes for lambing next spring. For this to work effectively, the ewes must have been out of sight, sound and smell of the rams for the previous 28 days, at least. Once the rams are introduced (either a vasectomised ram or an entire ram with a no mate harness attached), some ewes will show silent heats immediately, while the remainder will go in heat after about six days.

This introduction will have kick-started the ewes cycle proper, and the entire rams should be introduced 14 days later, to pick up the ewe’s heat on day 17 and 23, depending on when they had their silent heat. I will pull the rams out after this first service period.

The first group will be synchronised using the ram effect, with the other two groups synchronised by use of sponges

This will allow me to have the Central Pogeny Testing (CPT) ewes lamb next, with no repeats from the natural service clogging up shed space. The CPT ewes this year are being split into three groups, with the first being mated naturally by rams, the second group being mated using cervical AI and the third group being mated using laparoscopic AI. The first group will be synchronised using the ram effect, with the other two groups synchronised by use of sponges. The rams will be returned to all the ewes after this to mop up any repeats, which will be lambed down in April and possibly outside, if the weather permits next spring.

Grass covers

The grass covers have been building up nicely over the past few weeks. I finished spreading the last of the nitrogen fertiliser last week. This was applied to the final few fields that were grazed, in an effort to maintain growth over the next month or so. I have some fields that are low in K, on which I will apply a bag of muriate of potash per acre. After this, I will be getting the last of the FYM spread. I plan on targeting this at the grazing fields that had silage removed over the summer, in an effort to return some more nutrients back to these fields.