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Yesterday we had an incalf heifer looking as if she was ready to start to calve and she was looking around where to calve, just in the late evening. Two hours later and just going dark, her water had broken and she had got two calves with her, but they...
This was tale about what happened to my brother and I when I was 9 years old and my brother just over 6years . I was just old enough to work helping the then cowman Philip to load kale for the cows, a job he did every afternoon ready for the following...
Well its that time of year again when the calves have got to be weaned , the shed has been prepare , the troughs along the front have got gates above them to stop the jumpers, the water trough has extra rails to stop them going through, enough bedding...
Pulled out all parcels and shopping and stood back, while the old Austin Montego finally cremated itself in the middle of the road. The old Austin Montego Estate Car, it was a farmers car, or life before we had a Landrover 1970’s / 80’s ( The demise of...
Our local cattle market is at Market Drayton, about half an hour's drive west, it's usually store cattle that I sell there, having a suckler herd, I run them on to just short of two years old and sell them to finishers. I buy no corn (barley or...
I was always of the belief that cattle not rushed about or driven will take the line of least resistance, usually uphill. Have you ever been sitting having breakfast, when a bull looks into the kitchen window, well we did. It was Winston, our seven year...
For years there used to be a Knackers' yard in the next village, it being within our parish, where all dead and rotting carcases were taken for disposal or collected by their open topped wooden sided cattle wagon with its hand cranked winch. The aroma...
A sad end to a good old cow who had produced a calf every year of her productive life. Every now and then you loose a cow, and in my life time in farming three such cases will stick in my mind forever, one of which died a few days ago. The very earliest...
I was brought up to cater for a two hundred day winters, and rarely did the cows go out until the third week of April. Hay with kale was fed up to the turn of the year then on to hay and stored mangols for the rest of the winter, corn was fed according...
Job to know where to start, and find things long forgotten, Things we used like brushing hooks, n' pitch forks stale gone rotten, At one time there used to be quite a few dispersal sales on the run up to March 25th when tenancies would be timed to...
I went down fields counting cattle, and through the ford every day, Always it got wet from the brook, started rotting the chassis away. I bought my first land rover I bought second hand some forty odd years ago, it was a light green diesel rag top, the...
I read the Farmers Weekly, ov read it all me life, Read it in the good times, and read it through the strife, In its words and pictures, brings us all the news, Tells us of our leaders, n' tells us of their views. This farm could double its output...
First year farming in my own right 1961 Out to daytime pastures, to distant fields to graze, Back again for milking on long fine summer days, Just dug out an old diary from just fifty years ago, and on looking at the page where I recorded the June Returns...
So all in all you reap what you sow, you cannot keep robbing the producer, in this case the cow. It started when I joined a Milk Marketing Board scheme called ‘Low Cost Production’. November 1962. Much to my disgust I seemed to always be in the lower...
I remember father counting, cattle each and every day, He counts and looks at every one, to see they're all OK, A cow that persistently gets out, gets better at it, she learns to jump or hop over slack wire, learns to push rails down and push at the...
It looks like the beginning of a two week cold snap; the cattle seem to have grown a longer woolly coat almost over night, and its still only third week in November. In general the stock has grown well through the summer and with a reasonable quality...
But only when we are trying to round them up, all the rest of the time out grazing with the other cows she is quite normal. If there is more than one person in the field she becomes aware she starts to get alerted, and if by chance we start to drive the...
On the odd occasion, now and then, things take a different turn to what you have planned for that day. I had planned to take two big steers in to Market, checked their tags, they had been pre-movement TB tested, filled the entry form and signed the passports...
Each cow that went through the gate stumbled onto their knees, scramble back onto their feet and panicked, and fled down to the far end of the yard It happened one fine summer afternoon, when I went to bring the cows in for milking, they all get strung...
We left the calves with them for most of the winter only weaning them in mid February, by this time it had pulled the mothers down, so almost all of the herd now looks "poor" or should I say slim. Well its that time of year again and the suckler...
Milked by hand some cows had teats almost as thick as your wrist , with front teats sticking out "east west". Dairy cows of old, bore little resemblance to the diary cows of today. Back in the 40's every herd had its own bull often reared...
Over the years you build up a clutch of embarrassing moments or events. An early one I recall was with my relatively new bike (bicycle), when we were younger we always yearned for a new bike, but had to make do with an old one cobbled together from the...
At one time cattle were always driven to market; some times miles away in the local town, and nearly every house or cottage had a garden gate that could be shut as the cattle were herded by. Then from the market they were herded again to the slaughter...
Each stall holds a pair of cows, left and right they learn, Once they know their own side, one word n' they discern, The Cow Stall gave way gradually to the cow cubicle starting around 1960, when the milking parlour changed milking for ever. In the...
To catch them by the chin and ear, back them in the crate, Kicking, jumping, bellowing, mother cow's rattling at the gate. From mid June we started feeding corn in a creep feeder for the suckler calves, it takes quite a while for them to start to...
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