Paula Hynes: I'm beginning to think autumn has passed us by!
Dinner time for the autumn-calvers on the Hynes farm
Only for the leaves on the trees, one would think autumn passed us by, and we went straight into winter. The weather has made farming hard work and ground conditions tricky.
Unfortunately, the extension to the slurry spreading has so far been little or no use with the horrendous wet weather we have got, it begs the question why we are still being asked to farm via calendar farming.
So much talk about improving water quality in Ireland and it is currently legal to spread slurry up to October 8, yet we are getting torrents of rain and if we get a prolonged dry spell in November, it will be illegal to spread slurry when conditions on the ground could potentially be better... yet people wonder why farmers get so frustrated by all these regulations.
Storm Agnes most definitely made her presence known, and while we were lucky there was no major damage done bar a few trees and branches down around the place we weathered her well.
We made sure all the different bunches of animals were in good, sheltered fields, and they were none the worse for it. It made me think that I really need to start thinking of getting organized for the winter ahead.
While all the cubicle sheds were power washed during the summer, there were other bits and pieces that needed doing that inevitably didn’t get done due to the fact we had an extremely busy show season.
I always laugh when I see it, they are lying there happy out like queens. We have sheds that are connected to each other and if the shoots are not cleaned out, all you get for the season is dripping and I can't stand dripping, it drives me nuts.
The next important job is to make sure all the scrapers are working correctly, as I have spent enough years doing them with a hand scraper, and I definitely don’t want to go back to that!
We always power wash the entire scraper as well to make sure that it is catching the whole way along, making life much easier when the cows need to come in.
I really try hard to keep the passages and cubicles clean, doing them few times a day, which makes it much easier to keep my ladies clean. It's vital they are kept clean to minimize dirt getting into the cows' teats, which only causes more hardship if they get mastitis.
At least with the fresh calvers already in, I'm building myself up slowly into the winter routine. I always find you tend to use a totally different set of muscles when brushing and liming cubicles and it takes my body a while to adjust.
They are lapping it up and they seem quite content, especially when they avoided having to go out in the rain the few days around storm Agnes. They are milking well and are happy and settled in their new routine.
All the calves are thriving. We have them on the same milk powder that we used in the spring. We picked one that is made up of a blend of skim and whey to mimic the digestion of the whole milk.
It also has a balanced ratio of essential amino acids to aid growth of the critical production organs to enhance calf health performance, its fully fortified with all the essential minerals and vitamins and contains cylactin to promote excellent gut health.
We are happy how they look, they have lovely shiny coats, and they are very playful, which is great to see. Georgie loves to spend time in the evenings with them as they all run round after her.
With Becky still over at Panda Holsteins, prepping our heifers for the All Britain All Breeds Calf Show next weekend, we are very excited to head over and support her in what will be her first major national show over in the UK. Fingers crossed for her!
