After weeks of dreary grey days, I woke up last weekend fully sure I’d slept in – the room was bright instead of the murky half-darkness I’ve become accustomed to recently.

Yet a squinted glance into the glare of my phone screen told me it was only 7.20am, and the first time I’ve noticed an obvious change in the daylight hours.

Most mornings my first mug of tea is taken while glancing at the shed camera to ensure nothing is amiss.

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This occasionally results in an earlier start than planned and a couple of weeks ago the bottom rail of the feed barrier had sheared through overnight, leaving a gap for an adventurous bovine to step over.

Of course one of the yearling heifers did exactly that and was having the time of her life exploring every nook and cranny around the feed passage in between bouts of making a mess of the bales.

Luckily she hasn’t the shrewdness of our older cows so didn’t figure out how to knock the lid off the feed tank which would have been a disaster as it’s stuffed full of maize meal and rolled oats.

She’d have been one happy camper with a tummy ache if she could undo a latch, but it was also a timely reminder to always keep feed stores covered as the unexpected can often happen.

Hopefully being put in-calf might curb her enthusiasm as herself and the comrade heifer were both served on consecutive days at the beginning of the week.

Luckily she hasn’t the shrewdness of our older cows so didn’t figure out how to knock the lid off the feed tank which would have been a disaster as it’s stuffed full of maize meal and rolled oats

The second heifer is younger than we usually AI but she is a tall rangy sort of Limousin around 450kg and as I can remember back six generations in her ancestry, I’m confident she will make up any difference in size over the next year.

Both got easy-calving Limousin bulls (Loyal and Slieve Felim Sterling) which we have used with no issues on heifers before so hopefully they’ll both hold and we’ll have a couple of early calves in December.

There is always consternation when blood is found in a pen of in-calf cows and one afternoon last week our oldest cow in the shed began to pass a small amount.

Everyone knows that feeling of dismay when it occurs as there’s nothing you can do except watch, wait and hope for the best. Thankfully by the next day all looked ok but we’ll be keeping a close eye on her just in case, though as she’s supposed to be five months in-calf there would have been more obvious signs if she’d lost the calf.

As we only have two bays fitted with mats we decided that while the barrier was broken we’d switch around the cattle to let the ones on the concrete have a turn on the rubber as three cows from that pen are due next month.

We always try to keep cows in the same pen before/after calving so getting them sorted now and settled back in a different area should make things easier when the time comes. In theory anyway.