All cattle were gathered up last Wednesday - some weren’t too difficult to gather as they were back in the shed due to the wet weather and poor growth.

They were then divided up into three different batches.

The first batch was cows with bull calves at foot, the second batch was cows with heifer calves at foot and the third batch was three cows that I intend to cull along with their calves and another three calves that for one reason or another do not have a mother.

I intend to feed meal to this batch throughout the summer, wean the three calves as early as I can and get the cows away as soon as possible, no passengers needed this year.

All calves also received their first worm dose. There was a bit of coughing to be heard so I was suspecting some lung worm and these calves would have had access to grass for close to three months at this point, so a dose would probably do no harm.

Precautionary dose

I usually give a precautionary dose this time of year and work with dung sample results later on in the season. I usually give a white wormer down the throat at this time.

All calves got an oral mineral drench, as well as their second clostridial shot. I think the mineral drench just gives that little extra boost to the calf and aids performance.

All animals in the herd, with the exception of the stock bull, were then weighed for the BEEP scheme.

It’s a time consuming job putting every animal in the herd through the crush

Performance was mixed, some were exceptionally good, some were disappointing, but that’s nearly always the way when weighing stock and, to be fair, some of the animals have seen very little grass this year yet.

It’s a time consuming job putting every animal in the herd through the crush, so I decided to get a headstart on Tuesday night when I came home from work.

I decided I’d do all the dosing and vaccination through the calving gate in the slatted shed.

It was slow, as I was just catching one animal at a time, but meant it was very easy to divide them into bulls and heifer calves, as I just let them into separate pens when I was finished with them.

Other ideas

Also, I could work away after dark with the lights in the shed - my crush is outside, so working in the dark is not really an option.

The thinking was all I’d have to do on Wednesday was run them through the crush and weigh them and hopefully I’d get finished in reasonable time and get on to the next job or list of jobs on the agenda.

Unfortunately, one of my cows had other ideas.

Stupidly enough, I suppose, I left one cow standing on her own in the pen at the back of the crush and seemingly she got lonely, because she attempted to jump from that pen to join her comrades in the crush.

I say attempted, because she managed to get her front half into the crush, but of course her back half did not follow and she ended up perched on top of the gate unable to move back or forward.

Thankfully, my cousin has one of those clamps for lifting cows and I managed to get the tractor and loader close enough to her to get her lifted off the gate and get the gate open.

Then she decided to try to jump out of the front of the crush. I think she must be self-conscious about her weight or something. She really didn’t like the look of those scales.