Just when we thought our scour troubles were over, one of the calves has come down with a particularly persistent form of blood scour. While we’ve thrown everything but the kitchen sink at him, dosing him with natural yoghurt, microbes and numerous different powders, along with a cure of the bleed made for him, he hasn’t looked like turning a corner any time soon.
Just when we thought our scour troubles were over, one of the calves has come down with a particularly persistent form of blood scour.
While we’ve thrown everything but the kitchen sink at him, dosing him with natural yoghurt, microbes and numerous different powders, along with a cure of the bleed made for him, he hasn’t looked like turning a corner any time soon.
At this stage, he’s so miserable looking that we are thinking of getting him euthanised in the interest of animal welfare. There’s only so much a calf can endure and we’re getting rather downhearted seeing him looking so wretched each day. While he is eating and drinking it’s getting to a stage where we have to bite the bullet and make a decision on him in the next few days.
At least he thankfully hasn’t passed it on to any of the others who are thriving with the good grass growth and the creep feeder.
We got the first cut of silage made at the end of June, with a decent looking crop taken in just before the weather broke. For once we had no worries if the weather would turn before we got the meadows cut and didn’t have to contend with the wet spots like usual.
We also managed to get our slurry out on these fields, so time will tell if taking two cuts is more beneficial to us in the long run. It’s certainly much easier working with slurry at this time of year, without having to think about using pipes on soggy ground.
Though at one stage we thought we’d have to abandon spreading the slurry as the heavens opened just as we were agitating the tank, causing a deluge of rainwater into the shed as the gutters couldn’t hold it all.
Our last calf for a while also made an appearance, another Charolais bull, meaning we’ve had a 80% male to female ratio this year with a surprising lack of heifer calves.
There’s nothing better than arriving down to the field to find a calf standing up and sucking away happily. As she’s one of our quieter cows we knew that we would be able to handle her in the field, if necessary, but that wasn’t needed as she easily pushed out a rather large calf. Somehow she also managed to cut one of her teats, so keeping the flies off it has been a continuous exercise.
For the first time in my memory we didn’t get any turf cut this year, as there’s more than enough left over from last year, along with a few trees earmarked for cutting down.
While I can’t say I missed the backbreaking work that goes into lifting and loading them, I did miss the quiet solitude that seems to go hand in hand with working on the bog.
There’s a lot to be said for the simple pleasures in life, such as the comfort of a turf fire on a cold wet night. That being said, however, I’ve to have a full restoration done on my chimney before winter as the flue is blocked, what had been a temporary measure back in the seventies has finally decided to stop working and at the cost of repairing it, perhaps it’s fortunate I didn’t have to buy turf this year.
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