The Birds and the Bees

Spring is over.  Where did that time go? Sorry for the delay in posting! We had a bit of fine weather here (see photo above) and that meant everything went crazy for a few weeks: Weaning Calves, Spreading Slurry and Manure, Farm maintenance, Machinery repairs, and of course my son's 4th birthday (most important of all!!) - anyway you name it, we were doing it! :)

Unfortunately, the winter has caught up with us again (!) and it is a blustery, cold and wet start to May.  The cows are still being supplemented with silage as the grass hasn't started to grow properly yet and we've had to increase their meal ration in order to keep them happy and ready for the breeding season.

Yes, its that time of year already!  All the cows are calved, all the bull calves are sold and breeding has commenced!  

You might recall an earlier post where I mentioned we had first-cross fleckvieh heifers to breed this year.  Well they arrived down to the home farm a fortnight ago for artificial insemination (AI), here are a few photos:

Two 'Wille' Yearlings

'Rumgo' Yearling

Another 'Rumgo' heifer

First Cross Fleckvieh Yearlings with 3 HF Milking Cows in background

Here's the view from the back.  As you can see, these yearling heifers are strong, nicely muscled with good feet and legs.  The three larger bodies in the background are milking cows who are 1-2 years older than these yearlings, but as you can see the Fleckviehs aren't much behind them in terms of size.

You might notice the stripes of blue in the photos, this is tail paint to help indicate when they are in heat.  When this happens, other cows will mount them rubbing the paint off.  Its a simple but effective method of indicating when to breed them.  We will then AI them with the appropriate sire.  If we're lucky, that straws takes and a calf arrives next spring.  If not, then she will cycle again in three weeks time.  

Normally we let our heifers run with a stock bull.  However, this is our first set of fleckvieh x holstein maiden heifers and they are quite special to us.  They are the first wave of a new breeding direction on our farm.  That is why we have decided to AI them so we can have a few second cross fleckvieh (F2) calves arriving next spring and hopefully get a preview of things to come!  

These yearling heifers are bred from Austrian Fleckvieh Bulls from a company called Genetic Austria:

Wille

Rumgo

It is a commonly held view that Genetic Austria is breeding for 'dairy type' Fleckvieh whereas in Germany there is more a focus on a 'dual purpose' animal.  You might recall that our 2015 calves are from Bayern Genetik bulls (Germany) so in a few years time I'll be able to form an assessment.  As of now, we're just delighted with the quality of our Fleckvieh calves and heifers.  Only time will tell if they will make quality milking cows too.

Speaking of the calves, they are out on grass at the moment too and seem to be thriving well.  

They have been dehorned and vaccinated for salmonella already.  In the next few weeks they will be dosed for worms and vaccinated for blackleg. We are determined to give them the best possible start in life.  When they come in for those treatments we will also fit them out with some new jewellery:

These ear tags will help us to keep track of who is who, and assist us in making breeding decisions when their turns come.  Its all business with the birds and the bees at the moment! :)

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!!

More Calves, More Fleckvieh, More Sleepless nights!

Calves, Calves everywhere!  It has been a busy few days on the Caherconnell farm with a couple of calves arriving every day and one particular night we had four new arrivals - all of them Fleckvieh cross calves!

 We are very excited about this little lady - no. 88.  Her dam, 918, is one of our best cows and milks between 7,000 and 8,700 litres of milk a year!  This is her second ever heifer (female) calf out of 6 calves so this is an animal to be prized.  As if that wasn't enough good news, this calf, as you've probably guessed by her white head and chocolate brown body, is a Fleckvieh cross.  Her sire is Rurex:

Rurex has over 10,000 daughters milking in the Netherlands.  He produces daughters with very high components of fat and protein, he also supplies excellent feet/legs, udders and fitness.  We can already see that these calves are substantially stronger and more muscled than their Holstein Friesian (HF) counterparts.

This is no. 88 standing beside a HF heifer calf, no. 87.  They were born within minutes of each other but, as you can see, that is where their similiarities end.

This is our pen of bull calves.  These will be kept for 4-6 weeks before going to the mart to be sold.  Generally they are bought for export to the veal trade in mainland Europe.  It is a terrible thing to say but we have no value in our bull calves.  We want cows to calve so they will have milk and we want heifer calves as these will grow up to be milking cows.  A bull calf is not exactly worthless but it is close.  Our HF bull calves averaged a sale price of €44 in 2014.  Now to be fair, 2014 was a terrible year for calf prices - but the fact remains - those bull calves actually cost us money.  It is another argument for crossing with Fleckvieh.  Our Fleckvieh crosses averaged €144 in 2014. Because fleckvieh are dual-purpose i.e. they produce milk but are also more muscled and 'beefier' animals, the Fleckvieh adds value to the bull calf and the cull cow.

One of the heifer pens with two fleckvieh crosses looking out at us. The chocolate brown on the left is a Rurex calf while her companion on the right is a Waldbrand daughter.

This time one of the HF heifer calves (no. 76 on the right) came over to say hello too! We didn't AI (artificially inseminate) with any Holstein-Friesian straws in 2014.  However, we still use a HF stock bull on our maiden heifers (those females going in calf for the first time).  There are three reasons for these. First and foremost, HF calves are easier to calve which is a matter of concern as we calve down most of our heifers at 24 months.  At this stage, they are still quite young so we want to make their first calving as easy as possible for them.  The second reason is that the heifers are kept on an outfarm so is is simply easier to use a bull.  You might remember the post on winterage? Well the heifers spend their spring and summer as yearlings, running with the bull at the bottom of that mountain in the lush green fields.  The final reason is that, excited as we are about Fleckvieh, we don't actually know if this plan will work yet!  We've done the research, we've started the breeding but it will be 2016 before we have our first Fleckvieh crosses milking and probably 2019 before we know if this experiment will really work the way we hope!  So the HF stock bull is a bit of a safety net for us.

   I'll leave you with one of our newborns.  This Fleckvieh heifer calf, no. 91 is just one day old, also out of Rurex - he seems to specialise in chocolate coloured offspring!  There was another new arrival during the night - my poor husband was out of bed at 1am to assist in the delivery.  All are healthy and happy thankfully, but no photos as yet. Next time! :)

Spring has Sprung!

February has arrived and in between the showers of rain, snow, sleet and hail we can make out the first signs of spring in the air.  The days are a bit longer, the mornings are a bit brighter, the birds are a bit louder as they gather in their hundreds outside the parlour...

and of course the calves are coming thick and fast!

This is our lastest arrival, a fleckvieh heifer calf who is just 7 hours old and has already sucked her mother's milk and is jumping around the pen like a crazy thing! 

We also had twins this week:

This little lady is only just born and is trying to stand up already!  

'Nose to meet you' 

All the calves above are Fleckvieh crosses.  That is to say their mothers are Holstein-Friesian (the usual black and white milking cows you see around Ireland) and their fathers are Fleckvieh (pronounced 'fleck-vee').  Fleckvieh are a German/Austrian breed of milking cow that are part of the Simmental family.  We hope that these crosses will produce a stronger, fitter animal that lives longer while producing roughly the same amount of milk as our Holstein-Friesians.  

All the calves pictured above are out of a Fleckvieh bull called 'Waldbrand':

Waldbrand is known for producing big strong dual purpose cows with excellent udders.  He is easy calving (very important when considering a bull!) and has excellent milk production with high levels of fat and protein percentage.  

We are paid for our milk on the basis of how much fat and protein is in it i.e. the higher the quality of the milk, the higher the value of it.  So, Fleckviehs should produce an added benefit for us as their milk tends to have higher components of fat and protein.  Of course, all this is pie in the sky as yet.  Our first fleckvieh crosses were born in 2014 so it will be 2016 before we actually have any milking and can determine whether this crossbreeding experiment will work for us!

However, it is not all Fleckvieh calves.  Our first calf of 2015 was a Holstein-Friesan (HF) heifer.  All of the springers (cows having a calf for the first time) will be having HF calves as they are easier to calve down.  We are reserving our Fleckvieh use, for the time being, to the milking cows.

First calf of 2015

Nosy Parker!  The calves will suck on anything - the pocket of your jacket, your trouser leg, your fingers - whatever comes close.

Most Fleckviehs, like this bull calf here have a full white head.  However, Waldbrand doesn't always stamp his progeny with white heads so it could get interesting trying to figure out which calf belongs to who as the season progresses!

 They all lined up nicely for me here.

Thirsty work!

 The calves aren't the only ones waiting for a drop of milk!

I hope you're enjoying reading about the day-to-day activities at Caherconnell.  If there's anything you'd like to hear about or any comments you'd like to make, please feel free.  Its lovely to hear back from readers.

Until the next time

The Waiting Game and the Winterage

Donkeys on our winterage overlooking Galway Bay

All is quiet in Caherconnell this week.  Two of the puppies have gone to new homes and there are two more probably going in the next few days! *sniff, sniff.  They'l be missed!! After all, is there anything more adorable, cute and wonderful than puppies??!

Otherwise, the weather has calmed down, the cows are lining up to calve and we are in that edgy, restless, anxious phase of waiting when you try to relax and enjoy the momentary calm...but it is impossible when you know the storm is going to break at any minute!

The accounts are done as are the projections for 2015, but there is still some fiddly financial bits to work out so we have our ducks in a row!

                                  

The projected milk price for this year is 26c/27c a litre, so it will be a very tough year for any farmers new to dairying or who have big loans.  I hope they can make it through!

What you might not realise is that most dairy farmers need a milk price of 27c a litre to break-even, and that is with all the European funding.  A big fuss is made on occasion about farmers getting huge grants of money -but the reality is that these aren't grants; these are a means of keeping farm produce at low prices.  If farmers didn't have that supplementation we would be operating at a loss, stop producing our goods and the price of all dairy products, beef, chicken, eggs, pork, cereals, vegetables etc. would go through the roof.  That would continue until the natural economics of supply and demand stabilised the price where it naturally should be i.e. much higher than it is now!

                                

Sorry slight rant there! ;) So moving on, while our dairy cows are snug and cosy in their shed there are some beef cattle up on the mountain for the winter.  I can already here you exclaim in shock and outrage - animals outside in this weather!  Well there is a bit more to it than that:

This mountain is part of the Burren winterage, a limestone area of (small) mountains where animals spend the winter outside and are able to forage and survive with little or no additional feed.  This is because of the special ecological conditions, namely the warmth of the limestone and the mineral rich grass which grows there.  This "winterage" is unique to the mountainous region of the Burren in Co. Clare and it is quite funny to think that, as farmers everywhere else bring their cattle down out of the mountain, we are putting ours up! Only in Ireland!! ;)
We currently keep beef cattle (Charolais & Limousin) on this winterage between October and March and keep them in the grassland valley below for the rest of the year. As you can see they are happy out:

Cattle on the winterage

That is it for this week but maybe next time I'll have some newborn calf photos for you! :)

Puppies & Snow!

So we've had a little change in the weather here over the last few days. (Major understatement!)

Every time I turn on the weather report it is all colour alerts and weather warnings, orange, yellow, wind, snow but I think we have escaped the worst of it in Caherconnell...so far! *fingers crossed. 

Having said that we woke to a white landscape this morning and the roads are interesting to negotiate: snow, slush and slippiness.  I'd say the calves are glad of their thick winter coat.

This heifer has the freedom of the yard.  Unfortunately, she hurt her leg over the Christmas and as a result lost her calf.  We're hopeful that she will make a full recovery but only time will tell.  She isn't able to manage in the shed so this way she can have her pick of the feed and choose her own spots to lie down. 

Meanwhile, her herd mates are the picture of contentment as they look at out the cold and the wet.  There are a few getting close to calving and we should have our first calves in about a week or so. By the end of February we expect to have about 75% of our cows calved, that will hopefully mean 60 happy and healthy calves.  

But while we're waiting for the calves, we can introduce you to our other farm babies - The Puppies!! :)  These five gorgeous little devils were born in November and are just about ready to go to new homes but before you fall in love with them - Be Warned: These are working dogs not pets!!  

Both of their parents are good cattle dogs and we will be keeping one pup to train up for the farm - we have high hopes for the little lady.  However, we are actively looking for homes for the other four, so if you want one or know somebody that does, feel free to get in touch.