After 25 years of illuminating the shed, our old fluorescent lights finally stopped working last week, leaving the building in darkness. As most lighting these days is LEDs, the components were very difficult to find, as both tubes and starters were required.

Luckily a relative is a local builder and he managed to source both for us within a few days and they were fitted with some interested spectators looking up at him.

Without much fanfare, our first calf of 2026 arrived early the following morning, almost as if the cow had been waiting for the new lights to be installed. Typically it was a night where everything was blanketed in a thick freezing fog.

At least our new camera system lived up to, and even exceeded, expectations, as we could observe proceedings from indoors – though the uproar from the weanlings in the pen next to the newborn would have woken anyone in close proximity to the shed.

I had an idea she was carrying a bull calf, as she was looking heavy in recent weeks, though he was up and suckling so quickly I incorrectly believed it to be a heifer at first. I’m sure many of us have watched the Crocodile Dundee films over the years and a quick hands-on like Mick in the bar soon cleared up that it was indeed a male.

No offence to the males of the species, but over the years I noticed it’s much more likely that calves of the female variety are faster to find both their feet and the teat.

In recent years, we have introduced gradual weaning, which has been quite successful with minimal stress involved on both sides, but recently we had an empty cow which had to be split into a different pen for extra feeding.

Her calf was let out to suck once a day for a while, but being a first calver, she had no prior experience of weaning time to fall back on and neither animal was happy with the situation.

In retrospect, the few kilos of rolled oats and maize meal being fed to the cow daily has probably given her similar energy to some of the boyos running around the Irish National Stud, but everything settled down after a couple of days fully apart.

Nearly every bale of silage opened so far has been top quality and with greedy cows it seems to be going faster than we would like, so a small amount of the same mixed ration is being given to the cows. With nothing more due to calve until March, we have a quiet period ahead of us, though every time I say that something new always crops up.

The word on everyone’s lips recently has been Mercosur and, though I was unable to attend the protest in Athlone last weekend, it was heartening to see such a large turnout despite the majority approval vote on Friday.

While every small farm around our little island may look different, their roots are similar, based on a respect for the land and animals.

The last few years finally showed a decent return for beef and Irish farmers have worked hard to build a name for quality beef produced under stringent standards. For those rules to be relaxed and inferior meat allowed into the country under the deal in question is like a kick to the shin from a trusted cow in the yard.