It’s not too often you could say that you miss the February weather but hopefully the rain will clear over the coming days.

Calving kicked off properly at the start of the month and before I knew it the two-thirds point was reached.

I expect the number of cows due to calve will be close to or at single figures by the end of the month and after that the stragglers will draw things out as long as they need to.

I think it’s the first year where the peak calving time became this condensed but, while there were a few busy days, things weren’t as busy as they were other years.

Perhaps that’s down to having an eye on both the past and the future. I enjoy farming and have every intention of continuing to do so but I’m not as young as I used to be and won’t be getting younger.

Combining what worked well before with making some labour-saving changes should help in that regard.

A few changes of direction with an eye on the future and the bank balance have eased the workload and with the value of hindsight, I wish I had made some of those changes sooner.

Topping the hindsight list is polled cattle. I now regret not making that choice much sooner. Disbudding suckler calves was easily my least favourite job.

Even with them confined in the crush, it was physically demanding work that hopefully will no longer be required here.

With the exception of one calf that is from a hetrozygous polled bull but thankfully has no sign of buds yet, all the rest of the calves are from homozygous polled sires.

One job less

It’s one job less to be done and other benefits include less strain on my back, no bad experience for calves and no cows getting over protective.

The knock-on effect means an animal that’s a bit easier to deal with as they get older too.

With more calving in a shorter space of time, it means more thought will have to be given to shed space

Something to note when I’m doing a review of how things went is I’ll need to scan earlier and get my cows into groups of when they’re due rather than messing around picking some out of different pens.

Some of that is a result of trying to get a handle on how best to use the shed since the extension was put on a few years ago.

It might make more sense to run the cows as a larger group with a straw lie-back and keep the weanlings on slats.

With more calving in a shorter space of time, it means more thought will have to be given to shed space.

As it stands, the oldest third of calves are all out since last week. They are split into two groups: the older cows with their calves and the heifers with theirs.

Given the current weather, there will be a bit more thought given about whether to delay breeding by a week or not but if the sun was shining right now I’d be happy with the decision to start breeding last May.

The calves have had a rough start but have been adept at finding shelter. If I need to feed a bale to slow the rotation, that’s fine, but I just don’t want a shed full of cows and calves and scour to break out.

That happened 10 years ago and it’s something I don’t want repeated.