Good morning everyone,
It was pretty wet north of our farm late last week and over the weekend. We did get rain, but not a lot, and nothing like up north. At least there was a little overnight. In all honesty, we would have liked a bit more. We have had no rain for almost three weeks. Farmers love rain – but not too much :-).
On the Farm:
We are still working hard clearing blackberry and scrub from the edge of our farm. We have also done a lot of spraying. We have a lot silver leafed trees growing along the lake which are like pernicious weeds. We cut them out about 6 months ago, but they are growing back so quickly. I am spraying all the stumps and regrowth. I am determined to win this battle.
Its worth mentioning here how much I HATE (and don’t use) Roundup on the farm. It kills all the microbes in the soil and you can see many months later where it has been used. We ONLY ever using it to kill any barberry regrowth from our farm hedges (and up our driveway). We won’t use it on our pasture ever!
So for the above spraying we are using a spray called GRASSMATE. It is very hard on blackberry and other scrub, but leaves the grass alone. We only ever “spot spray” weeds that the animals won’t eat. There are lots of weeds that are controlled by the cattle, and the more variety of grasses (and weeds) consumed by them the better they do.
The herd is very relaxed, and there is still plenty of grass for them. They are very happy. Apart from our bull Mt Vernon, they are all run as one herd. This is a lot easier than 2-3 different herds, but harder when you are yarding the herd to weigh calves etc.
The Fencers haven’t done a lot over the last week, which is frustrating. I guess good things take time. They are back today, so cant wait to see some results!
I will post some photos once this section is complete.
Spotlight on:
The week we want to spotlight one of our older cows, Libby, which we might have spotlighted a long time ago. She is topical as she is supposedly to calve of the 3rd of April, and we have her and Mt Vernon in a small paddock beside our house. The reason I say “supposedly” is that she is not “uddering up” at all and does not look like she is going to calve any time soon.
As you can see, she is a big mumma. She weighs over 900kgs, but is as quiet as a lamb.
Libby is almost 11 years old, but I remember when she was born as if it was yesterday! I found her mother, Jerry, lying down absolutely exhausted from calving Libby, but not knowing she had calved. Libby was pretty much out, and Jerry did not realise. Libby still had her birth sack completely covering her. I did the last pull, cleared the birth sack and got Jerry back on her feet to look after Libby. If I have not found them, Libby may not have lived. It was so lucky!
We will still keep Libby on, but won’t put her back into calf until November. As mentioned in earlier posts, we are wanting to have our calving all at one time in the year.
That’s all for this week. As always, we love feedback, so it you would like to make any comments, we would love it!
Thanks so much
Colin and Keryn