Farmer Writes: the blind bull and his rewards

Grazing is moving back on the agenda and fences are getting a once-over, although you could say grazing never stopped this winter.

A group of younger cows were left out, to take pressure off the shed and while the plan was to house them before Christmas, they defied expectations.

The fact they are light and most of where they were grazing was solid ground helped. With some of them due at the very end of calving there’s a fair chance they won’t be under a roof at all.

On paper, grazing like that isn’t the done thing but, with a later calving season than before and the fact those fields aren’t the easiest to put cows and young calves into, our spring rotation planner has evolved accordingly.

A group of younger cows were left out, to take pressure off the shed and while the plan was to house them before Christmas, they defied expectations

If the weather improves a bit again, I hope to get some of the weanling heifers out. Numbers will be kept small for a start.

It’s been a silage-only diet for the majority of them this winter. The smaller ones have been getting a kilo but that’s only in the last fortnight since the last of the finishing heifers left.

It’s a big change from the time when they used to be on 2kg or 3kg daily.

In the lead-up to going to grass they will all get a small shake and will be trained to an on-off system for a few days. It’s a major labour reducer in the long term.

New arrival

There was an unexpected start to calving last week with an earlier than predicted arrival.

I didn’t know anything about it until I heard that humming sound a cow makes when she has had a calf coming from the straw area.

I was wondering why the cow in question never came into heat while doing AI.

My concern with broad environmental payments is, in the next economic downturn they will be one of the first things to be got rid of or reduced

Scanning revealed she was a good month ahead of any of the others. The cow in question had been babysitting a bull who was recovering from photosensitivity. While he was blind for a part of last winter, he was obviously well on the road to recovery by April.

There’s the bones of a month before any others are due so the in-calf heifers will be getting a fluke and worm dose and all cows will get a scour vaccine. After that, it’s a case of sit and wait for the next arrival.

General election

There are promises aplenty flying around in the lead-up to the general election. From a farming perspective, they include talk of rewarding farmers for one environmental management, capping CAP payments and the good old farming election mainstay, the suckler cow, gets a mention too.

My concern with broad environmental payments is, in the next economic downturn they will be one of the first things to be got rid of or reduced, just as they were in the 2008 crash.

It might be too obvious, but this is land that would offer an instant solution to easing the biodiversity crisis and would reward farmers who for years have been penalised for it

Currently, there are areas of farms, in some parts of the country vast swathes of land, that are deemed ineligible for payment yet would have a good nature value.

With the new CAP having a focus on the environment, is it too simplistic a view to have an environmental payment on this?

It might be too obvious, but this is land that would offer an instant solution to easing the biodiversity crisis and would reward farmers who for years have been penalised for it. There could be the bonus of helping to retain communities in areas where dairy is not an option. Perhaps it’s something that should be considered.