William and Andrew Cowx: Calving in the small hours after a very successful lambing

We have had our losses but have finished with 190 per cent lambs reared off the ewes put to the tup and, with odd ewe lambs still to lamb, they should do 125 per cent with ewe and hogg mortality at 1 per cent.

We did manage to sell or give away 25 pet lambs, but are still left with 60, which have made a lot of extra work. Most of the lambs are marked, castrated and scratched against orf so now all we want is the grass to keep them going on - the weather forecast at last seems promising.

We have been around the farm with fertiliser but a little rain would help, providing it does not forget to stop.

We are about half-way through calving with 32 cows calved in the last three weeks. Our cows are mostly in cubicles but, once calved, we put them in individual pens for a day or two before we tag them and put them into batches in a straw yard.

Andrew has been getting up during the night, firstly to look after the ewes and now the cows, they seem to like calving in the middle of the night.

We were at a demonstration one day and were told if you feed cows at night instead of the morning they would calve during the day - it is worth thinking about.  

We are busy teaching a bull to walk haltered for the sale next week as well as haltering the young bulls for our sale in mid May.

We had a load of straw delivered this morning, which I hope will see us through to turning out time. I dread to think what it has cost us for straw this winter, usually we cover the silage with straw bales but this year, with the high price and scarcity of it, we will have to find another means to do it.

As the volcanic dust settles, the political dust starts to rise as the election gets nearer. I have probably missed it, but as yet I have never heard agriculture or food mentioned in any of the debates. At present the outcome is very uncertain, but we will know the next time I write.

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