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Down In Devon
October 2007
What another fantastic month October has been, sunshine nearly every day and very
warm. This has meant that the cows are still going out to grass by day, but we have brought them in and opened up the clamp silage by night.
We only did this to keep the milk from dropping because even though the weather has been so
good the grass has stopped growing and there is only enough out in the fields for day time feeds.
The clamp silage seems to be much better than we had hoped for despite being done eight to ten
weeks later than normal (because of the wet summer).
Although we have not had it tested yet for protein and milk output, it smells lovely and has
fermented very well. It is very palatable and the cows are eating a lot of it.
The cows came in by night on the 17th October and on the 19th October we had our yearly T.B.
test on all the cattle over six weeks old, this is always a very anxious time, because if your herd goes down with T.B. you can not sell livestock unless it is going straight to slaughter. Luckily
we only had one cow that was an I.R. (inconclusive reactor). This means that because we have not had a positive T.B. reactor within the last three years, only this particular cow will be on
standstill regarding movements, and not the whole herd. She will have to be re-tested in sixty days time from the last test.
Because the weather has been so dry we have been able to subsoil about 90 acres of our silage
ground. We have got a three leg subsoiler which has a mole plough type point, with fish tail wings on each leg. The subsoiler goes down about 14 inches into the ground, and as the tractor pulls
the subsoiler along, the fish tail wings bust the compacted pan in the ground, and create cracks right up through the soil. This enables the top water to drain away and will help the soil to warm up
quicker in the spring, hopefully enabling the grass to grow quicker. The pan in the ground is created by compaction over the years by heavy silage equipment.
On our monthly routine vets visit this month, our vet advised us to test for liver fluke in
the dairy cows. This is easily done by taking a milk sample from the bulk tank. The result has shown a very high incidence of liver fluke (because of the very wet summer) this means we will
have to drench all cows and young stock that have been out to grass this year, so good advice from our vet.
Speak to you next month when hopefully we will all still be sunbathing!
All the best
From Steve
Down in Devon.
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