Paula Hynes: Black pudding in Cork and Belgium
Becky Hynes getting ready for the show ring at YBS in Battice, Belgium.
The weather has taken an autumnal turn with damper days and cooler mornings, and I find myself reaching for the hoodie every morning now as I head out the door for milking.
It makes quite a change from the weather we have had since last March. We were looking for rain through most of the summer to keep grass growing, and now we find ourselves looking for two dry days together so we can get the maize harvested.
It is very early still for harvesting maize, but there is a super crop there; the cobs are big and yellow. Niall looked at our crop a week ago; he has great experience with maize and felt one more week would fully ripen the cobs.
If we can harvest the crop with cobs ripened while the plant holds its green colour, it will be excellent feeding. We have ordered an additive to help preserve the crop in the clamp.
Kasey’s dam calved with a lovely heifer calf by Vierra Sting. It’s our second Sting heifer calf this autumn, and we also had a Chocochip heifer calve with a Blondin Classic heifer calf, so there are some nice Jersey calves on the ground again.
We have also had three Holsteins calve, all of which had heifer calves which are sired by Bullseye, Pazzel and Hardy.
Between training baby calves to drink from feeders and halter training milkers, the yard is quite busy at the moment. Halter training older animals is time-consuming as it needs to be done daily, but thankfully, all of them seem keen to work with us. It can be an uphill battle if a cow decides to be stubborn.
Becky had a great trip to Battice in Belgium for YBS. Arriving late on Tuesday night, the host family she was staying with were very welcoming and helpful, dropping her and her teammates into the show early every morning.
On the Wednesday, they received the heifers they were working with for the show. Becky got a Claynook Barola summer 2024 born heifer named Ophelia De La Garde Dieu owned by Christophe Piron.
The team were shown how to correctly construct a pack where heifers are stalled, worked on washing, and Thursday consisted of showmanship tutoring along with clipping demonstrations.
Becky got her heifer fully clipped on Thursday, easing the pressure for Friday, where they had marketing demonstrations along with an exam and with clipping out of the way, she had time to practice more showmanship with her heifer before a long stint on night shift looking after the heifers.
Shows can be demanding with little time for sleep, and YBS pushes students to the limits — if they want to continue to make a career out of working with show cattle, they need to understand it is not for the faint-hearted or those who require lots of nap time.
Saturday was the first show day with heifer confirmation classes. Only the best heifers prepared correctly for the ring and show skillfully were going to get into the ribbons. Becky led Ophelia into third place in the May/June born heifer class which was a great result as the heifer didn’t make it easy and Becky had to work for the result.
Showmanship classes started early on the Sunday morning and if Ophelia was making life difficult for Becky on the Saturday, she was even worse on the Sunday due to the fact she had come in heat and was acting like a hormonal teenager throwing a tantrum.
Becky knew the result wasn’t going to be good and it wasn’t, but that is the joy of working with animals — things don’t always go to plan.
The rest of the Irish team all placed very well in the showmanship and once the competitions were completed, it was time to enjoy the awards ceremony and team parades before making a dash for Brussels to catch a flight back to Dublin.
Huge thanks to Damian Storan and Andrea Rafferty who were team leaders for the Irish team. It was fantastic to be kept updated and see photos of behind the scenes and how they were progressing.
For Becky, it was a quick turnround, arriving in Dublin at 10:30pm and staying at an airport hotel before a 4am start to fly out to Birmingham and head for Telford to link up with James Doherty of Firstlook Genetics whom she was helping out at UK Dairy Day, where James had two cows competing.
Finally flying home on Thursday, it will be nice to have Becky home for a few days, hear all the news and show her some of the new arrivals.
The plan is to also get the animals we have been halter breaking smartened up over the weekend, so the clipping machines will be back out again before they are thoroughly cleaned and packed as Becky is heading out to Newcastle on the Tuesday morning to clip a team of seven for the All-Breeds All-Britain calf show.
While Becky was away, we got a brief chance to attend the AETE conference in Cork. It is the first time in their 41-year history that they held their conference in Ireland.
City Hall was the venue for the gala reception, which was also attended by the lord mayor, who chatted with international guests who mingled to a backdrop of traditional Irish music, welcome drinks, and, of course, more black pudding to sample.
The conference itself shared a wealth of knowledge with a lengthy list of expert speakers from around the world sharing their knowledge and research on embryo transfer work, synchronisation programs, nutrition for donors and recips and how to increase the percentage chances of cows maintaining a pregnancy.
Pete sat on a panel discussion with Juan Moreno, CEO of ST Genetics, Dorreen Corridan, CEO of NCBC, and Shane Murphy. The panel discussed IP and contracts on genetics and the consensus was that it is a positive step for the industry, with Juan Moreno saying it had been a game changer for how the US genetics industry operated and had a hugely positive effect for US farmers.
A great deal of credit goes to James Quinn for bringing such a world-class genetics conference to Cork and, more importantly, showing the international attendees what Cork has to offer, from great dairy farms to great hospitality and food.
