Getting into it
Two calves today, one yesterday, one on Wednesday.
I guess the season’s started.
Naturally, it can’t be straightforward. I have a heifer to move out of the springing mob into the milkers tomorrow – she steals every calf born. Meantime, today’s two bull calves are in the milking herd, with their mums, overnight.
A 17 kg Jersey bull born to a heifer on the other farm – apparently failed to suckle, and his mother turned out to have a nasty case of mastitis in her rear right. The calf drank about 1.5 litre colostrum mixed from the two new cows tonight – I was glad not to have to tube him.
And I’m saying nothing about that headbail.
According to the list I’ve just put into Mindapro, I tagged twelve heifers and two cows this ‘afternoon’. It took from about an hour before dark to an hour after dark and I’ll be embarassed to meet my neighbour now… in fact probably every neighbour for three farms around.
To think there was once a myth going around that I didn’t know any swearwords…
I got me a set of bathroom scales for the calves. That’s how I know that calf is 17 kg. Today I had to subtract 61 from its weight. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly that number drops – it’s 3 kg heavier than Wanganui vetgraz recorded at the end of April and that itself was 3 kg heavier than my normal ‘calving to Christmas’ weight.
The grass seems to be picking up. The springers (close to calving) cows are on 40m2 at 2300 cover and 3 kgDM of maize silage. That’s keeping them happy – they clean up and don’t complain when I go see them, though they could probably eat more.
