Tag Archives: dairy farming

My Farming Week: Flighty Calves, Paper-Eating Heifers, Red Spray and The End of an Era

21st March 2015 by Lorna
2 comments

Between the bank holiday for St Patrick’s Day, the children being off school for two days and the fact that I wasn’t doing any training or mentoring, I’ve had a pretty full on farming week. I’m doing 2.5 days of training next week and I know I’ll probably end up with a croaky voice as a result. Teaching requires a lot more talking than the occasional chat with calves and cattle!

Telepathy Alternatives

16 cattle went to the factory on Wednesday morning [...]

#Calving15 Has A Good Start

6th February 2015 by Lorna
4 comments

It’s that time of year again – when a text or a call that says ‘I need a hand’ always puts me slightly on edge.

Heifer Calves

Calves are actually much more sensible than humans in the way they are born, more sensible than other animals too. They usually come out singly so they don’t have any siblings there with multiple limbs to entangle them! They usually come out in [...]

Farmers: Optimistic or Pessimistic?

6th January 2015 by Lorna
2 comments

When I was interviewed by Ryan Tubridy last December (shameless name dropping there!) he was teasing that farmers tend to be negative, grumpy and pessimistic. “Not so,” was my reply “They are optimistic, they always see the silver lining but they can never be too positive as they just never know what is around the corner.”

After all, although we don’t get extreme weather here in Ireland, it can happen that sudden flash floods can still damage crops or make a [...]

Garrendenny Matchmaker

2nd December 2014 by Lorna
4 comments

New update – 18th January 2014

Garrendenny Thomas has had a name change. I can’t remember the twitter conversation with Progressive Genetics but apparently I made a comment that it would be fun to have a name based on matchmaking given the title of my book. I knew there was a bull in New Zealand called Matchmaker. ?We were just checking details yesterday and noticed his name has been changed – it’s now Garrendenny Matchmaker, which is kind of cool. [...]

Interview with Alison German, Australian dairy farmer

26th November 2014 by Lorna
2 comments

I can’t remember when Alison and I first met on twitter or what we started chatting about but somehow we discovered that we’re both dairy farmers with similar sized herds (at the time) and we share a birthday. Someday we plan to meet on our birthdays – be that Ireland, Australia or somewhere in between!

Alison also blogs and I thought that by doing a featured interview with her, you’d all get to know here too. I sent her [...]