We recently had to have a cow put down after she broke a leg; not a great Saturday night that one! The financial loss added to the distress at losing an animal we have come to know well, over the last four years. Of course once the most immediate problem of disposing of her body was […]
As usual, we fail to predict the arrival of our first calf. After ten years of doing this we still fumble around for some kind of certainty to replace the ‘well sometime soon’ when asked exactly when the calves will arrive.Last Sunday morning Alan arrived (name suggested by daughter; don’t know why). A sturdy bull […]
It is almost exactly ten years since we borrowed a trailer and drove to Ed Turner’s farm near the east coast, beyond Ipswich and that’s a long way east; to pick up three in-calf cows. That was a pretty exciting and alarming day and there have been plenty of memorable ones since – births, deaths, sales, […]
Two calves last Tuesday. Or at least Shiny produced a lovely but quite small heifer sometime during the previous night and Chilli a larger and energetic heifer during the morning whilst I was preparing some pea sticks. Both are doing well now that we have got past the annual worry that they won’t find mum’s […]
The first calf our herd produced, all the way back in 2003 was a beautiful heifer that we called Poppy. She has over the years grown into a lovely cow who resembles her mother, Nancy. Since her first, she has borne a succession of excellent bulls including the notable “Elvis” so-called because of his first few very […]
Things were a bit on the low side during the latter stages of the winter and in March, Copper, a cow that we’d been nursing since October had a final visit from our vet, Caroline. Having tested negative for a whole range of conditions, we were hoping she might somehow recover. This was not to be and Caroline, […]
The last few days have been filled with cattle. Thursday morning last week was our first chance to get ear tags into the three calves born the previous Saturday. We try to get tags in within 48 hours because after that time, calves are quick, agile and strong and rather tricky to catch. And so it […]