Myself, my better half and a couple of other friends headed for Dublin last Friday afternoon. Like half the country, the destination was Croke Park and the Garth Brooks concert.

We were counting on the way up how many concerts we’d been at together since the first time we ventured to see U2 in Croke Park in 2005.

This was number 11, everyone seemed to think - the only difference with this one was we weren’t staying up.

We were turning and burning and driving home after the concert.

Hotels

It wasn’t because we now all have children we have to get back to, it was just down to the sheer cost of hotel rooms in Dublin.

Now our driver is not a drinker so a few cans of Red Bull and he was happy out, the rest of us with our bellies full of McDonald's just fell asleep and we were home in no time.

One advantage of coming home is that I got a good day’s work done on Saturday.

If we’d stayed in Dublin, I would have spent the night drinking Jameson and coke and would have been no good to man or beast the next day. Every cloud.

Dark evenings

As the saying goes “the evenings are fairly closing in” and the mornings aren’t much better. It feels like we’re losing half an hour every week.

I need to be running out the door fairly quickly when I get home from work or there won’t be much done before it's dark.

It’ll soon be time to dig the headlight out of the drawer and get it charged up.

I have to say I really hate the thoughts of the winter starting. It’s never so bad when you get into it, but the thought of starting back into it is just not nice.

Weather

However, at least the weather is staying fairly good at the minute, as are ground conditions.

All calves are now weaned and grazing good-quality aftergrass. Bull calves are eating about 3kg of a 17% protein weanling ration and heifer calves are eating about 1kg of the same.

I had a slightly strange experience with a weanling heifer last week. She had been weaned for about two weeks and was eating meal before she was put on to after grass, but for one reason or another she started to scour quite badly on the lush grass. Everything else in the batch was fine except this one.

I’m assuming she gorged herself on some meal as well as a big belly full of lush grass which caused slight acidosis.

I put her into the shed for a couple of days on silage and straw and she seems to be fine. I just need to keep an eye on her for another while before letting her back out again.

Vaccines

All cows received their salmonella vaccine a week ago along with their annual mineral bolus. The first 20 cows due to calf received their sour vaccine this weekend.

I usually try to leave two weeks between these two vaccines but I still had these cows in the shed after weaning their calves and was putting them back to grass.

Work smarter not harder, they say, so I decided I wasn’t putting them out to grass this weekend just to bring them back in again next weekend to give a vaccine, plus Saturday was a lovely day to be working with stock.