We are urgently developing research requirements with other European laboratories to make sure we understand and the disease (Schmallenberg) better.In your field
Dominic Naylor: Reaping the benefits of returning to three-times-a-day milking
They say time is a great healer. Having had a break from three-times-a-day milking for three years, and spent many hours waking from a recurrent nightmare, I switched the vacuum on for a third time each day.
The principle makes sense, just the reality back then was a non-English-speaking Pole uttering ‘problem’ every other night at one o’clock in the morning.
Cows have responded with a 10 per cent rise in yields. With an
average 220 days in milk and a yield of 30 litres, I’m pleased. There are other benefits - the cowman can now spend a little more time with his family.
The sheep have settled well in the shed and weekly footbathing with 3 per cent formalin is paying dividends. I have pulled out any lame sheep and inspected their feet, which appear nice and dry in the interdigital space.
Any ewes with foot abscesses have had an injection of long-acting antibiotic and will receive a further dose of the footrot vaccine. The students have been busy administering clostridial vaccines.
The frosty weather has allowed students to plough some maize land. I hope this year to avoid the headland compaction problems I had last year and a little bit of spade work should tell me where the problems are.
Nothing stays the same for-ever, or so I tell myself when the alarm goes off at 4.30am, but three years ago the pigs were pulling the farm down financially. Now they’re propping it up.
The College held a food and farming conference on climate change, population and food production this week. I usually avoid conferences as they often have little relevance to farming at the coal face - but not this one.
A number of farmers with both large and small businesses demonstrated ways they were rising to the challenge of increasing production while reducing water and energy consumption.
Collaboration was yet again depicted as a winning formula. Farmers have a degree of power in that we own the land resource.
Talking of power, I welcome the decision to appoint a supermarket ombudsman. Let’s hope it has teeth - a set of gnashers similar to Margaret Beckett’s should do it.