Good morning everyone,
We hope you have all had a great last week – and weekend. The weather has certainly been good.
Mind you, on the farm, winter does seem to be creeping in with colder nights.
On The Farm
Fences: Well the fencers still have a lot to do, to get all our new fences in place. As mentioned – we will be away from Tuesday week for 10 days – so we are desperate to have all the fences completed, so our “stock minder” can move the cows with no issues. We don’t feel 100% confident.
Baleage: With the fences down, we do not have a good “bank” of grass ahead of us for the winter, so we are a little concerned. However, we did manage to buy 76 bales of baleage, and this should get us through the winter OK. We will wait until we get back before we get it delivered – and the fencers have created a special area to store the baleage – away from the naughty cattle.
Our reserve beside the river: We have worked really hard to remove barberry and blackberry from along the lakeside, and now have a couple of reasonable sized areas where we can put the cattle in to keep the growth under control. They do a marvelous job maintaining such areas. We just need to make sure no barberry or blackberry grows back. Have a look at the special views the cattle will now get.
Before they go in there, though, we need to replace the very old fencing right along the edge of the lake. We don’t want any cattle in the lake – that’s for sure!
Farm paddock place names With all the upgrading of the fences, we can now do something we have wanted to do for many years. We never wanted to have paddock names as “paddock 1”, “paddock 2”, “paddock 3” etc. Our goal has always been to name the paddocks after some of our very special animals – many of whom, now, have travelled over the rainbow bridge.
What we found a few weeks ago, on good old Temu, were signs that could be personalised with names. We got a few samples out, and one stood out immediately.
This particular sign commemorates one of our most special cows, Cheeky (a mixed breed cow we hand reared well before we started breeding Angus cows). Cheeky was SO special and it broke our hearts when we found her dead in the paddock one morning. Now Cheeky will have a paddock named after her. It will be hung on the paddock entry gate. We have 16 paddocks, and we have signs being made for all paddocks. There are even paddock names for of a couple of Keryn’s special horses, who are buried here.
Spotlight on:
This week we want to spotlight one of our special young heifers – Brenda.
You might be able to see on her tummy a big white streak. This is because her mum, Bryar, is not an Angus cow – she is a black/white face hereford/fresian cow. Bryar was bought to use as a “recipient cow” (to carry some special expensive pregnancies – though embryo transfer). We no longer do embryo transfer, but we love Bryar to bits – and she is definitely a long term keeper. Brenda is her baby (to our Angus bull, Tristan). Brenda is completely black apart from the white line on the tummy.
Brenda is growing SO well. Bryar always does a great job raising calves, and we have already retained two of her previous babies. We can’t keep keeping unregistered animals here, though, but Brenda might be an exception!
That’s all for this week. We do hope you all have a great week ahead!
As always – we LOVE feedback, if you want to comment.
Colin and Keryn