Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, is the reason this Hereford-Friesian calf is called Mary. Yet, by the end of her third day of life I had to admit there was definitely something about Mary. She was a tad infuriating for the first couple of days of her life although, being so young, it’s not like there was any point getting cross with her.
We had Hereford calves last spring for the first time in decades and they all took to food like [...]
I suppose all calves are special but when you have 135 of them being born in a relatively short time, it’s not really possible to have a soft spot for all of them. There are some factors though that make a calf stand out. We tend to name a few partly because it’s handy to be able to say ‘check number 2305, he’s a bit off colour, he’s in Bruce’s pen’ rather than having to say ‘check 2305, he’s in [...]
Cows aren’t natural ballerinas or gymnasts. You probably knew that already. They can run fairly quickly if they want to but aren’t that dexterous. That creates problems if a cow decides to go for a dance or inadvertently slips and falls. If they fall, they are usually fine, just like a child gets up and walks on, they do the same. However, the odd one will ‘do the splits’ and go down. If they go down and can’t get up [...]
It’s quite a while since I last wrote a ‘My Farming Life’ post – mainly because writing, editing and self-publishing took over. It doesn’t mean life on the farm has been quiet though, there’s been lots going on.
One thing we did was we have registered our dairy herd as pedigree now which is exciting for us. What was even more interesting was choosing names for them. There’s just over twenty cow families in the herd so we had to [...]
This week’s farming focused on bulls and fertility! There’s wasn’t so much farming in my week this week between going to the Wexford Literary Festival yesterday (read about it here) and delivering a talk on Pinterest in Dublin during the week. This post comes with a mild warning for squeamish readers!
We did get four bulls tested for their fertility. It was the first time we’d done it and we’ll definitely do it every year now. We [...]
