Farmer writes: Lights, (calving) camera, action

The 2016 calving season will be one of my busiest yet. Cow numbers have crept up a little bit more, I have extra duties with the Irish Farmers Journal and to top it off I’m involved with a local amateur drama group.

I would always have had some activities going on with Macra na Feirme in the past, but this is commitment of a different level. With the exception of a short break at Christmas, we have been meeting anywhere from two to six nights a week since September. Our aim is to reach the RTE all-Ireland drama festival in early May, and it gets very real as we go live this weekend. Being organised is a must for the coming weeks.

The farm is my job after all, not my every waking moment.

Technology has played its part in allowing me to attempt this. This will be the third season that calving cameras are in place and it has really changed the approach to calving. It has given us confidence in our cows’ ability to calve on their own. The cameras have been a huge benefit both to time on the farm and off it. The farm is my job after all, not my every waking moment.

The scanned calving date was 9 February so I reckoned calving might kick off around 3 or 4 February. Knowing that, I set off for Skibbereen mart last Friday and arrived back to give the bulls their evening feed. Dad had called out to do one of what I call his inspections. We had a brief chat and he struck off to the cow yard to have a look at the cows before going home.

Calving 16 has started

He was not long gone when I had a phone call from him. “Oh balls,” was my initial thought, and I braced myself for a dressing down on whatever had gone wrong. I answered. “Calving ’16 has started,” he said, and hung up. It sounded positive anyway.

I drove down to see which of the 14 in the calving shed it was. I was caught off guard. A heifer not due till Valentine’s Day had calved with a very active little bull calf.

After this heifer, it was a case of keeping up with the Joneses in the calving shed as a second-calver and two heifers calved from Saturday to Monday. Each of these delivered small calves that weighed under 36kg for the most part.

This is what I like to see; they have plenty time to be growing once they are born. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for more of these little calves over the coming weeks.

Follow Tommy Moyles’ calving 2016 diary in the Farmer Writes section of Farmersjournal.ie