The past month has certainly been a tumultuous time on the farm, which just goes to show you can never take things for granted in the farming game.

At the beginning of October, we were on a high, delighted that we won the prize of champion Belgian Blue bull calf at the local mart.

Not only that, our first set of twins sold for a cumulative price of €1,550, meaning that our weanling sales got off to a bright start in a year when many were uncertain of trade. Surprisingly, those three calves were bred from 14-year-old cows, whose bloodlines can be traced back to British Friesian genes.

Docility, fertility, consistency and milk were traits associated with crosses from that breed, but unfortunately it’s not as easy these days to source this type of animal.

It’s not by chance those two have remained breeding into old age, as both cows have a history of rearing calves to, at the very least, 400kg by nine months.

Ground conditions

The majority of our ground was holding up well under the wet conditions and we were happy that we had enough grass to keep most of our stock out until the end of the month.

The occasional back-load of loose hay from our summer haystacks was also keeping the stock content on wet, cold mornings, while the calves formed a procession to their favoured creep feeder. I’m sure the cows would have taken that choice too, given the chance.

Cattle

Hopefully, we’ll have five more calves from this group ready for sale before Christmas, all lighter than the older three, but that seems to be the current trend for calves.

The cattle that were on our outfarm were also taken home, with a bit of mud and occasional affectionate curses between my father and myself.

Due to the wet weather forecast, the cattle that were on this land had to be taken home fairly swiftly, or else we would have been unable to reach them with a trailer. It’s likely that there won’t be any more stock put onto this ground until April, usually around the time when the cuckoo is beginning to call.

Unfortunately, towards the end of the month, we had a bad experience with a late calving cow.

A badly twisted uterus was not spotted until it was too late and, despite the best efforts of our local vet, we lost both calf and cow.

Having never experienced one of these twists before, it was a tough way to learn how to diagnose a case. It was desperately unfortunate, but one of those things that we’ll just have to chalk up to bad luck and learn from it.

Cat and mouse

On a lighter note, I was well and truly stumped on how to catch a mouse that had been in my attic for the best part of a week.

Numerous mousetraps with different baits were tried and failed, so as a last resort, I put one of the farm cats up after him. Sometimes, the old ways are hard to beat, as that proved to be the end of my mouse!