Good morning everyone,
We hope you have all had a great week. It certainly is warming up here. The grass is really growing and all the trees (including our new ones) are really “leafing up”.
Super El Nino:
With the good weather and lots of rain I decided to do an AI search on Super El Nino – to see if it was still forecast. The first report I got back said that there actually would now NOT be a Super El Nino – which made me really happy. After a few more checks, it does look like it is still coming. I am hoping it won’t be as severe as predicted, but who knows. We have bought in some more silage (not enough yet), so we are doing all we can to be prepared.
Preparing for the breeding season:
We had planned to start our breeding on 1st December, but are now thinking we might bring it forward a month to 1st November. Some cows will not be ready – either they have only just calved, or have yet to calve. These ones will just have to be late – and we don’t mind too much. Over time we will get their dates closer.
To match up cows to run with certain bulls, and AI etc. – we will need to have 4 separate herds, so there will be a bit of work drafting the cows and calves.
On the farm:
This morning we have Dayne (and his bobcat mini bulldozer) arriving on the farm. There are lots of jobs for him to do. We will fill in another two of the huge holes, that were dug out to burn the extracted barberry hedges. Then there is a lot of landscaping, and some old handmade concrete block water troughs (which are no longer used) which need to be broken up and dumped before the holes are filled in.
Our Solar Array:
Wow – the clearer spring days are bringing in some huge solar days. Yesterday was a record with 140KWh of solar captured. To put it in perspective, the farm and house uses less that 20KWh in a day, and when we top up our EV – we might go to 35-40KWh. We export the rest back to the grid, which is cool.
With the buy back of our solar production , by our calculations, we might be getting a return on the solar investment of close to 12% which we are very happy about! Of course we also know that the electricity companies, over time, will keep increasing their charges too, so, hopefully, this return will only increase.
Spotlight on:
Lots of calves have been born recently (which we love). We are always in awe with how much love and attention the cows show to their calves. It’s a lovely time on the farm. So we should highlight our very latest edition.
This is SONYA who was born a couple of days ago. We picked up that her mum, Shania, was preparing to calve, so noted the time, in case she had issues and the vet was needed. Shania (the clever girl) delivered the calve within 10 minutes! This is the fastest time I have noted for a cow to calve.
Sonya is as strong as, and Shania is a loving and attentive mum. Sonya is is very good hands!
That’s all for this week.
We genuinely do love feedback, so we would love to hear from you!
Cheers
Colin and Keryn