Well, that’s Christmas over and done with for another year, and thankfully no babies were found in mangers around here, unless we’re allowed to count the mischievous little heifer who jumps out through the barrier as she pleases to sleep on the silage.

A new year always brings a fresh start, regardless of how the year before has passed. None of us have as yet invented a way to travel back into the past and change what has gone before, so all anyone can do is reflect on the previous year and look at what we can try and change to make this one better.

For farmers, that also means making changes to benefit stock, whether it’s regarding their comfort or health. On that side, we’ve got a new DeLaval swinging cow brush ready and waiting to be installed in the shed.

While I’m expecting them to have their eyes on stalks when it’s put in for the first time, hopefully they’ll take to it easy enough and enjoying a daily groom to keep them happy.

It’ll certainly make life easier for my hands, as I’m usually assaulted a few times each day by some of them looking for their daily scratches.

Looking back over the last year, we’ve had our ups and downs, but we’re all still alive and kicking, which is the main thing, so we can’t complain too much.

I find it best not to dwell on the sometimes and the occasionallies, especially with matters that will always be out of our hands, like the weather.

While this year certainly started off rather wet, we did have a fairly good run of things in autumn, but it would certainly have been preferable to have a couple of dry months in spring and Mother Nature, if you’re reading this, that’s a not very subtle hint for 2025.

Though we can aid our issues slightly with that side of things by carrying out more drainage work, which is what’s going on in a couple of wetter fields at the moment, which lie beside bogland.

It’s a constant battle trying to keep the lower ends of these fields dry, as they lie at the bottom of a hill, so trying to halt the runoff midway down is the plan.

ICBF

It seems like every other week I mention the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) and the data that goes along with it, but it was certainly a surprise to see the Simmental Society pull out of publishing ICBF genetic evaluations in its sale catalogues.

While it’s not a big deal to most of us as we can just check figures on our phone with a tag number, it’ll be interesting to see if any other societies follow suit.

While inputting in the cow/calf data on our latest arrival recently, I always find myself querying the data I put in as I feel like I’m boasting if I am putting in ‘V good/excellent’ across the board, even if that is the case with the animal in question. I find the most interesting report each year to be the weight and calf performance, which is the most beneficial to us, as we can see just how well a cow is rearing her calf.

While we average a daily weight gain of 1.6kg, our weaning efficiency floats between 53 to 60%, which is on the higher end of the sale, though I bet it would look a little different if we didn’t have a creep-feeder out with calves.

That being said, we will still aim higher in 2025 and hopefully it will be a prosperous year for us all in the farming community.