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!!