Farmer Focus Livestock: Weather provides a challenge for Clyde Jones

As we recover from the festivities, another year milking over Christmas still comes as a shock, what with missing the Queens speech. Hopefully we should be dry for the next one or my knighthood is out the window!

The various outwintering plots are working well. The kale was the most trying, with in calf heifers not as settled as we’d hoped. But when we substituted some low DM silage bales with hay, they were good. And with the autumn heifers, once they realised fodder beet was a food source, they started doing well. However, we’ve had intrusions from red deer running the gauntlet of the main road and electric fence.

The dry cows have got through a 10ha field of stubble turnips and are now looking for some where else to go – the next field of stubble turnips being under water.

There is some spare fodder beet they can graze, but fencing and water needs sorting.

The weather is providing a challenge with freezing water. With sunny Bournemouth close by you wouldn’t think it would get so cold, but temperatures of -10C have been recorded so far. This means we have been using a short pipe that can be easily thawed and returned, as well as a water bowser.

It’s good to see Graham Harvey’s theories on carbon sequestering getting the publicity it deserves. The idea paddock grazing systems involve more methane belching ruminants, the carbon remains locked up in the soil and not released into the atmosphere, makes pasture based farms more environmentally friendly.

We have recently had a vari-vac installed in the dairy. This is similar to a big digital vacuum regulator. While we have two vacuum pumps that are required, the vari-vac restricts their power supply to what is actually needed. The trouble is on start up, it sounds like an old Ford Escort on a frosty morning.

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