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Down In Devon May 2008
The beginning of May was most certainly better than the end of the month, there have been
terrible thunder storms and flash flooding in certain areas of Devon and Somerset, luckily we have got away quite lightly. I see from the news that the Ilminster and Crewkerne district have been hit
badly by these freak storms.
We cut our 1st cut silage on the 11th and 12th of May, the weather was fantastic, the sugars in the grass were very high and ground conditions (on our wet farm) were perfect. We picked up with the self propelled forager on the 12th and 13th and used "Ecosyl" silage additive. This should be some of the best silage we've made, crops were a bit lighter than we would have liked, some of our neighbours were asking why we cut so early. Now those same neighbours are wishing they had cut then because the ground is so wet and the grass quality is not too good. (Hindsight is a marvelous thing.) We cut about 160 acres for clamp silage and about 15 acres for round bale haylage, which we will feed to the young stock. A couple of days after the silaging was finished we applied 2.5 c.w.t of after cut fertilizer for the 2nd cut, this has washed in well and the after grass is growing well.
The cows are still milking well and we have started buffer feeding round bale silage to them
to keep the fresh grass in them, to help keep butter fats up. On the 30th May our vets rang to say that the Blue tongue vaccine had arrived at the surgery and every stock keeper in Devon was being advised to vaccinate their cattle and sheep. We were told to bring in a cool box with ice packs to keep the vaccine at the correct temperature. My father arrived at the vets to find a long queue of farmers all carrying cool boxes and cool bags. He said it looked like they were all going for a big picnic!
We gave all the cattle the first shot of the vaccine (1 ml under the skin) and will have to
repeat the dose in 3 weeks time. The vaccine isn't too expensive about £1.00 per animal, it's just another job to add to the many, but prevention is always better than cure.
See you next month
All the best from
Steve
Down in Devon.
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