With wetter and colder weather rolling in recently there was a noticeable surge in demand for the nuts in our creep feeder, with a ragtag line of calves usually following whoever went to fill the trough each morning and evening.

They’re being fed roughly 2kg per head daily, though with the age differences there’s likely a sizable gap between the intake of the oldest and youngest.

They’re a pretty even bunch this year, with most of the bulls currently around 260kg and unless the weather takes a complete nosedive this month we’ll likely hold off selling anything until at least mid-October.

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But at this time of year a week of heavy rain could change that plan fairly quickly and some of the more traversed areas are beginning to show signs of tramping.

Normally I’d wait until after housing to dose any animals exhibiting signs of rumen fluke

As we’ve signed up to the newly opened Beef Welfare Scheme again, I hope to send off some faecal samples in the next week and also book the scales for the weighing requirement, so, depending on the results of the former, any that appear in need of a worm dose will be done after we have an accurate weight to work off.

Normally I’d wait until after housing to dose any animals exhibiting signs of rumen fluke but, despite the dry summer our two heifers calving at Christmas look in need of a drench so I’ll prioritise doing them first and see how they look when they are brought in again for winter.

Whatever about those two and the calves, the cows have certainly thrived this year, with a number heading into autumn carrying more condition than I’d like so I expect their average weight to have increased from last year.

Although it’s earlier than usual we’ve already put out a couple of high-mag buckets as the nights are noticeably cooler than there were only a couple of weeks ago.

While we’d normally scan some of the cows to double-check they’re definitely in-calf, this year I decided on an easier option: a milk pregnancy test. In theory it sounded much less hardship than rounding up all the cows into the shed.

Nobody thought to inform the cows of their role in this plan

Instead I’d simply walk up to our nice obedient animals in the field, get a small sample of milk from the cows in question, post it off and wait for the text back to let me know if I could pencil her in for the maternity ward.

Yet nobody thought to inform the cows of their role in this plan and they twigged I was up to something suspicious. I ended up trying to sneak over to each cow for nothing more than an innocent scratch before slowly working my way towards their udder to retrieve a quick specimen.

Patience did pay off in the end but if anyone was watching me from the road they’d start to think I’d nothing better to do than walk around petting cows all day.

One benefit from the whole COVID-19 fiasco was the speedy transition to all marts going online as I’m sure it would have been a long drawn-out process if there wasn’t an immediate requirement for the upgrade. The downside however, is that it’s much more comfortable to watch a sale from an armchair with a cup of tea and half a packet of biscuits.

I had planned to attend the latest ‘Herbies Heifers’ sale in Carrigallen but after viewing the catalogue and picking out a few I’d not mind owning, I settled in to watch it on the laptop instead.

We still get updates on the heifer he bought off us last summer, and though she’s not in-calf yet we’ll certainly have to attend the sale she’ll be in next year. Who knows, I might win the lotto between now and then and could end up taking her home again. And for anyone wondering what heifers caught my eye this time, I wish the best of luck to the new owners of lots 15 and 34, though I’d happily have taken home any of them.