Farmer Writes: a new arrival

We had a very welcome early arrival into our family just before Christmas which kept us a bit busier than we had planned over the festive period. Thankfully, baby Aoife and her mother arrived home healthy and well in time for Santa and the Christmas dinner.

A few jobs on the farm had to be postponed due to this but we have a good team in place on the farm, so everything ran smoothly over the holidays and we even managed to get the few extra jobs done in the lull between Christmas and the new year.

This means that the herd is fully dosed and vaccinated now and we are moving onto freeze-branding the in-calf heifers this week.

We clipped all of the cows’ tails when vaccinating to keep their udders cleaner in the run up to calving and we are now giving the heifers some work experience by running them through the milking parlour a few times a week to get them used to the routine before they calve in at the end of the month.

When the heifers go through the parlour, they also run out through the footbath, which helps to prevent lameness in the sheds but also to train them in this routine for the spring. They are getting a taste of meal in the parlour to help them settle and we are turning on the machine to teat spray them and get them used to the noise and the bustle of the parlour before they need to go to work there.

So far they seem to be settling in very well, so we’ll see if it saves much hassle later in the spring.

Other jobs that needed tidying up were a few gutters and patches of roofs on sheds that got damaged earlier in the year. One of our neighbours brought a bit of expertise to this project and with plenty of help on hand for a few days, everything got straightened out very quickly.

This was an awkward job as the gutters were in a valley between two sheds, but hopefully the new ones will last another 30 years and be someone else’s problem next time they need replacing.

The focus will change to calving pens and calf sheds now over the next month. The calf feeder needs a good clean and a service and the last few calf sheds need to be tidied up and pens set up.

Tags have arrived in plenty of time for the coming season so hopefully we can use the rest of the month to get organised and get everything in place before the busy period. The liners and rubberware were delivered for the parlour and will be replaced on a wet day over the next few weeks. The parlour is also due a service before kicking into gear again.

We have a few patches of roadways that we are not happy with as well. These will be sorted out before the grazing season starts in February. The break from the milking routine has been a big help in freeing up time and energy to get these jobs done before the spring.

Numbers have increased to the stage where we need the break to get organised and we won’t be going back to milking through the winter again in a hurry.