Sunshine & Slurry :)

We have just had a week of glorious sunshine, blue skies and positively balmy weather with temperatures reaching the mid teens.   It has been glorious!  Do you know that feeling you get when the weather changes and the days lengthen and you just want to be out of the house?! Well its the exact same for cows.  They have been out of the shed every day with the past week now and loving every minute of it.

So lets take a look at a few of our milking cows.

This is 766, who we fondly refer to as "Ginormica".  She is one of the oldest cows on the farm. She is 90% Holstein and, as her nickname suggests, a big oul holstein type cow.  She was born in 2006 and had her first calf in 2008.  She was out of a fabulous old dairy cow 171Y, gone now but not forgotten - she was a super cow and her progeny are carrying on the torch for her. 766's sire was an AI Holstein Bull, Lordman (Code: LDZ). She produced 44000kg of milk in the last 7 years and is now starting her 8th lactation.  Isn't she looking well for her age?

This distinctive looking girl is 1236, also called 'the dalmation'.  She milked over 6000kg in her first lactation in 2014 which is just super production for a springer on our farm!  She is out of a Holstein Sire, Omjet (OJT), who seems to pass on a coat that is more white than black.  People laugh at me when I try to explain that there is a difference between a black and white cow, and a white and black cow!  However if a picture paints a thousand words I'll just use this one for reference anymore!

 This picture shows three springers coming to investigate my antics.  These are the children of the herd and the transition from heifer to milking cow is a big one for them - everything is new and strange.  The milking parlour is the biggest change to their routine and it can take them a couple of weeks to get used to how the whole thing works.   However, at this stage the parlour is old hat. This week, its all about being out in the field by day and still fed your dinner in the shed in the evening - pure luxury!   Shortly after this picture was taken they heard the tractor start up in the parlour yard and took off bucking and leaping up the road like skittish colts!

 While the scenery has been spectacular this week and the weather has enticed everyone outdoors, you wouldn't want to have very delicate nostrils.  Sunshine means slurry spreading! And as soon as the ground was dry, the slurry spreader was on the go.  The cows have been housed indoors since October which means there is five months of manure waiting to be spread across the fields.  Apparently the earlier in the year you can spread this on the grass, the better the ground absorbs the nutrients in it (most specifially nitrogen) and the faster the grass will grow!  So my two men have been busy driving in circles around the fields and assailing our nostrils with what my grand-aunt affectionately refers to as "the smell of summer" - I just hope the neighbours don't have their washing hanging out!!!

Until the next time, just remember:

Spring calving update...

Spot the odd one out! (The glowing green eyes might give it away!)

So we're still calving.... we're four weeks in now and have 48 cows calved.  I had hoped for more at this stage but our Fleckvieh bulls are carrying up to two weeks later than the Holstein bull.  That didn't happen last year so it took us a bit by surprise!

In addition to those 48, we are selling some cows in-calf so that means we have 25 left to calf at this point. I'm hoping that means the worst is over *fingers crossed.

We've had a tough couple of weeks.  As well as the usual craziness of calves being born around the clock, maiden heifers coming into the parlour for the first time, diet feeding every other day and spreading slurry - my husband Paul hurt his back (!) - not fun.  Thankfully, we have two great guys who help us out in the busy times during the year and they are absolutely invaluable at times like this.  They got stuck in and did all the manual labour while Paul propped himself by the wall and gave directions.  An injury really highlights the stark contrast between farming and other jobs.  In any normal job a person can take time off work to recover but, to keep the farm going, Paul had to physically be on-site.  Nobody else knew the jobs that had to be done or, sometimes, how to do them.

Shoving in the feed for cattle housed indoors in Daingean

We made our first trip to the mart last tuesday with 8 bull calves and one free-martin heifer.  Something you might not realise, but when a set of twins contains both a bull and heifer calf, the odds are that the heifer calf is infertile, also called a free-martin. That's your useless piece of trivia for today!  Prices were okay - the six HFs made from €40-€90 each. We had two Fleckvieh cross bulls.  The one with a white-head made €155, the other had no white head, he was bog-standard black and white, and made €110.   It seems odd to me that the white-head made more money simply because he had a white head! Both calves had a Fleckvieh sire and a Holstein dam, but c'est la vie!!  It was all infinitely better than the fleckvieh free-martin who made just €45.

Now you might be sick of my talk of calves so here's a few photos of our yearlings. 

There is a fleckvieh cross in this group! You wouldn't pick her out at first glance would you? Here she is again in this next photo, she's the black one on the right. She's out of an Austrian Fleckvieh Sire called Rumgo.

Yearlings 2015: Two Holsteins and a Fleckvieh Cross.

 There's a Fleckvieh cross in the next photo too - no prizes for spotting this one though.  Yes, its the red one in the middle! This lady is out of Wille.  No, we have no idea why she is red!  If I had to hazard a guess, I'm presuming there's a Red Holstein gene somewhere in her parentage so when that met a fleckvieh we got this colourful lady.

Yearlings: 3 Holsteins and a Fleckvieh Cross

These are the smaller heifer calves from 2014 so we'll keep them until they are two years old before putting them in calf.  As a result they are wintering outdoors here in Caherconnell.  The rest of their peer group are being kept indoors in the shed in Daingean so they can be fed and minded that little bit more before being put in calf this year.  I'll take some photos of this other group another day for you! 

Til the next time, I'll leave you with this pic:  

Now we're tired and sleep deprived around here but we haven't made this mistake just yet!!