18. Miscellaneous Snippets II

Well the farm is currently at a vital part of the season, where calving has ended and breeding is just about to begin. I say calving has ended, actually there is one very stubborn heifer left to calve. She should have done so about three weeks ago and has been milked for the past week. I had hoped to have a picture to put up here of me with the last calf of the season, but she is really hanging on to it.

Referred to as 'The Yellow Heifer', because she had yellow tape on her tail for a while, here she is looking as ugly as ever.

I am sure that she was AI'd because I don't think that would attract any bull.

Another cow, 'Ginger' has recently undergone important surgery. She had been looking a bit sick and was losing a fair amount of condition. The vet came to fix what was a suspected displaced abomasum, but turned out to be a large amount of lesions in the stomach. Possibly originating from when the dry cows were fed on fodder beet during the winter.

She has a matching hole in the other side of her abdomen. I think at one point mid-surgery you could see right through her (I was milking at the time so I missed out). She seems to be getting on the mend now, but she is producing no milk and if she recovers enough in the next few months, will end up nice and fat, and probably eventually in a Big Mac. Unfortunately there is no space for non-milking cows on the farm.

In other news, we are still short of grass. The ground temperature is still too cool to prevent any decent growth. We are having to graze paddocks that would not normally be grazed, at least not as much as they are doing now.

And we are still feeding out a fair bit of silage to make up for the lack of grass on the ground. The herd is getting a supplementary six bales per day (at approx 300 kg dry matter each) to try and keep milk production up. We are currently sending away around 13,000 litres, at just over 8% milk solids, every day.

 It is raining just frequently enough to delay the start of irrigation. Even after four or five days of no rain and a strong wind the ground is still pretty damp a couple of inches below the surface, as demonstrated by my boss who partook in a bit of 'accidental turf removal'.

The All-blackbird has been sitting in her fireproof nest for the past week or so.

Unfortunately the nest wasn't wind proof and there is now twigs and dry grass all over the car port. I think she might have abandoned the nest before it got hurricaned though, probably due to the noise of the bikes three or four times a day.

In other news, there is a war of the mugs going on in the kitchen. Upon my arrival in the house, you may remember I was not satisfied with the kitchen utensils. This included the mugs, they were far to small so I bought a bigger mug.

A few weeks ago Daniel came back with this mug, boasting of how much more tea he could fit in it.

Now, I am not an overly competitive person but I seriously upped my game today and bought this. I think it is safe to say that I will be winning for a while now!

Finally I will have a new colleague in the next few days, James who is from Northern Ireland. He is working for three months to cover some busy periods over the summer and Christmas. Being highly educated farmers up to date on current affairs, myself and Daniel have been joking about which flag he is going to sit under.

We love a bit of political jokery! 

That is all for today, the next blog post is likely to be about breeding (nudge nudge, wink wink, know what I mean..) and more specifically, artificial insemination (of the cows obviously).

As it is my day off, and I am in a country with some of the most amazing scenery in the world, I am now going to lie on the sofa and watch Top Gun. Don't worry, I have not got bored with NZ, this is merely a successful money saving scheme.

Catch you later.