It finally looks like our warm weather has come to a halt and some proper frosty weather will arrive shortly, and not before time – it was extremely strange having November days feel warmer than some days back in May and June.

While it’s great for cattle on land dry enough to maintain a grazing routine, a warm and moist atmosphere is certainly not ideal for housed cattle, especially weanlings.

Luckily, we avoided any major outbreaks of coughing since cattle went onto the slats and as planned we took our last weanlings to be sold for 2024 to the mart in mid-November.

The excellent run of trade has continued and we were quite happy with an average of €3.88/kg for the three heifers, with one 10-month-old Charolais/Limousin cross making the highest heifer price on the day at €1,490.

We were slightly disappointed with the bull as he made €1,310 but then again it’s still not a bad day when they’re making that price at eight months of age, and the market for blonde cross calves is not usually as big in comparison to other continental breeds.

Originally, the older heifer had been marked down as one we planned to keep on for breeding, hence her age, but since January her star value fluctuated between four and three stars before landing on two stars in the latest evaluation and we decided not to take a chance on the scant possibility of them rising again.

Despite the cow being one of our best breeding animals – and has been for close on the nine years she’s been breeding here, along with the bull in question (CH4160) being one with high reliability for replacement value, it still seems nigh on impossible to guess where the stars will fall.

While I don’t like to continuously harp on about it, with the number of years this scheme has been in operation I’d have liked to see a more static rating by now, especially when calves are genomically tested at birth.

Highest-rated animal

Ironically, the orphaned blue heifer is now the highest-rated animal in the herd and while we’ve yet to make a decision on breeding her until she’s a bit older, it’s certainly helped along by the fact she’d nearly follow a person to the moon if she was allowed.

Though upon letting her out for a run on the new concrete she showed quite a turn of foot and we nearly required a lasso in order to curtail her runaround and bring her back into the pasture.

She has remembered her halter training at least which is another positive for keeping her to breed. It’s been a few years now since I walked a cow to be served at the gate by a rather amused AI man, though it’s probably not advised in any farming handbook.

Hopefully, there won’t be any major ratings change in the little Limousin heifer that was born this month as she’s growing bigger by the day, along with her character. Being the only calf in the shed for the moment, she creates her own fun, namely attempting to evict people out of the pen when it’s being scraped down and she certainly makes the job far more tolerable as she prances around like a show pony.

November is also the month where we have to complete our Bord Bia audit for the SCEP scheme and while I try to ensure everything is kept up to date throughout the year, there’s always a worry that something obvious will be missed.

This time at least, everything was pretty much in order, so that box is ticked off for another year.