Paula Hynes: I felt it was fate and knew she had to come home to us

The main reason my new heifer was bought is because of her name — the same as the nickname my dad had for me

Judge Graham Kirby with Georgina and Becky Hynes and their prize-winning Jerseys at Charleville Show.

We had a great day out at the Charleville show. It was a lovely day with only one light shower of rain which to be honest was kind of welcome as there was a real dead heat there. 

Charleville is probably the premier summer dairy show in Co Cork, with big line-ups of heifers in classes. Graham Kirby from Lancashire took command of the judging. The girls had a good day with Georgie winning her showmanship class and the jersey calf class and Becky winning her showmanship class and the maiden jersey class. 

Not to be outdone by my daughters, I showed Becky's October-born Rathard Legend Maker Adina Heifer to take second place and ended up with reserve junior champion. A good day all in all and it was straight back down the road to milk the cows and get ready for the busy week ahead.

The first job of the week was to renew my driving license as it had just gone out of date and if I didn’t get it sorted at the start of the week it would be put on the back burner and more than likely forgotten about altogether as we have a busy few weeks ahead. 

Becky was away again for the week training heifers, however, with the Dunmanway show and the Cork qualifier for the YMA National Championships on the horizon, all heifers at home had to be walked daily. 

My new heifer

It was all hands on deck, with Georgie and Chloe to get our own heifers organised while I worked with my own heifer as she is making her debut at Dunmanway. Pete bought me this heifer two months ago from the Emerald Holstein sale. 

Her name is Emerald Chief Papouse, a June 2022 heifer. We had not taken her out before now as we felt she wasn’t ready and she needed a bit of weight but she is definitely looking much better now. 

The main reason she was bought is because of her name — now luckily, she has a lovely pedigree and the Papouse family is a nice cow family. My father, God rest his soul, always called me Papouse since I was knee-high to a grasshopper — we all had a pet name when we were younger and he called me that right up to his last day on earth. 

When I saw her at the sale, I felt it was fate and knew she had to come home to us. A nice reminder of the great days with my dad and it was nice to have a new heifer for myself after losing my beloved Val a few weeks back. 

So excited to get her out and have a bit of fun with her. It was funny actually — the first couple of weeks she wouldn’t come near me, it's after taking a lot of time and patience to get her to trust me but thankfully it all paid off now and she is really sweet. 

We had two different bunches of heifers to get ready for the weekend as the shows were on the Sunday and Monday, so we took the opportunity to take some other younger heifers who had not been out before on the Sunday to give them some milage and the seasoned heifers were taken to the qualifiers. There was plenty of walking and washing done and a hell of a lot of clipping. 

Becky came home the Friday night and was straight into clipping the next morning. As always everyone got stuck in and we made it all happen.

Housekeeping

We also needed to get the house tidied up a bit this week and the outside weeded and footpaths cleaned. The strimmer was brought out of retirement and the lane into the house and farmyard was trimmed and it made a huge difference driving in to have it neat and tidy. 

It's astonishing how quickly dirt builds up so it was out with the power washer as well. I love to sit back and relax and enjoy it when it's all done and cleaned. The inside of the house is next week's project, trying to grab an hour here and there to do a bit of painting, especially in the kitchen. 

We have three dogs who live with us and they think it is the best craic ever to come in and jump on the walls, and of course it's impossible for me to give out to them when they look up at me with their big puppy eyes — they know well I'm a soft touch. 

We have a project coming up that I will share with you all when I can, so it was a great excuse to get a bit done in the house because as you can all imagine the cows and the farmyard always get priority. We are just over two years in the new house now so a freshen-up was needed.

If work wasn’t busy enough around the yard, a weather window of dry weather opened up so Pete mowed four acres for quality bales and then mowed 10 acres of red clover for bales which we will probably feed to autumn calvers. 

We had mowed this field for the first-cut silage and it performed really well through the dry spell, 36 days between cuts. It will get slurry during the week and cut for bales again in five to six weeks' time.