Spring is coming!

Happy New Year!

My new years resolution? To blog about our dairy farm in Caherconnell located in the beautiful Burren on the west coast of Ireland.

Caherconnell Dairy Herd

Now that the farm is quiet, it is time to get to the bottom of that tottering pile of paperwork. With all projections indicating a poor milk price this year, we need to review the year gone by and start planning for the year ahead!  Its tedious and time consuming and nobody likes it but it has to be done! So there's plenty of grumbling and tons of pots of tea on the go around here at the moment.

After all there's only a few weeks in January and Spring is Coming! Spring is always daunting. The craziest and busiest time in the farming calendar, Spring means long days, late nights, the joy of new life, the sadness when you lose a calf, or worse still, a cow. The twice daily milking returns complete with the 5.30am alarm clock and a farmer husband who is rarely seen or heard from.

We have a herd of Holstein/Friesan cows but this is our second year breeding to Fleckvieh sires and I am really excited to see the Waldbrand and Rurex calves arriving this year.  Expect another blog post on this later!

In the meantime I'll leave you with a picture of our first two calves from 2014, both just one day old at the time.  The red & white is our first Fleckvieh cross calf!

HF + FLVx calves