As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I had been keeping a close eye on my blue heifer who was due mid-May and she duly showed great timing by starting to calve on the hottest day of the year thus far. A model heifer, she followed a bucket inside like a lamb and was presented with a well-bedded pen so she could do her own thing in comfort.

But that would be far too simple and when I next peered into the shed I was greeted with an empty pen and a smug looking heifer back in her original field after nimbly jumping a wall.

Round two began with her returning to the shed after the same bucket, and again she walked in like a lamb but once closed inside she began to stress so much that we feared she’d injure herself in her attempts to return to her comrades in the field.

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It’s always a relief when the unplanned goes to plan

Now it’s only once in a blue moon we’d turn a heifer out and leave her to her own devices at calving and aptly enough, there were two full moons last month which is where the term originates. After a brief debate about being able to get her back in if assistance was needed later, we opened the door and off she waddled back to her original spot.

It’s always a relief when the unplanned goes to plan and without much fuss she soon delivered a little black heifer who was up and sucking within 30 minutes.

The following day the new arrival was nowhere to be found and while I’d normally rely on a cow to give the game away when playing ‘hot or cold’ with a missing calf, Nova, as the heifer is termed, clearly learned her poker-face from the experts as she wasn’t giving any hints on where the calf was hiding.

Not the best time to be wearing shorts but I had to bite the bullet

After numerous rounds of the field I was beginning to feel like a riding-school pony until I spotted a flash of a yellow tag in the dark gripe behind a wall of rushes and the panic was over until an hour later when she slipped into a gripe while being mixed in with the other cows. Not the best time to be wearing shorts but I had to bite the bullet, slide in after her and wade through a cover of briars and nettles to push her out unscathed in comparison.

With the hot spell holding for a few days, we decided to cut two small meadows which are separate from the main farm. These cause a headache each year as neither have piped water and lugging water with a bucket from the river gets tiresome very fast. While the yield of 20 bales is small fry to most farmers, they’d have been very welcome when fodder was dwindling fast towards the end of April.

As these were being wrapped a further shake of fertiliser was spread on them using the quad spreader, with the aim of producing a second cut later on. For once we’re glad to find the cows are slow to come in heat.

When totting up the cows which we’d currently planned to overwinter, added in replacements and calves due around Christmas, we ran out of fingers to count rather too quickly for comfort.

Most years we have a few March calves which are sold in early autumn but the idea of holding off any breeding until mid to late June was tossed around, leaving the bulk of calving to April with the hope of an early turnout next year for cows with stronger calves. Of course, this relies on the weather cooperating in 10 months’ time.