Farmer focus, livestock:Julian Ellis tries to not tempt fate

Those of you who read this article regularly may remember in the spring we grazed half a field of red clover/rye grass. We took a third cut two weeks ago and haven’t seen any obvious differences in yield or clover content between the grazed and ungrazed parts of the field.

As I write we still have 20 acres of barley to cut due to unsettled weather, which also hindered the drilling of the later cabbage. We are currently mechanically hoeing the earlier cabbage to keep on top of the weeds in the absence of the sprays

Without tempting fate, calving seems to be going well with a drastically reduced number of retained afterbirths and very little milk fever. Despite this, we still had the odd cow needing assistance, with one particular cow aided by my father and a neighbour who was passing the field and offered to help. The second pair of hands made light work of the task, with the calf coming quickly causing both dad and the neighbour to fall to the floor. Dad in working clothes fell in the clean, but the neighbour who was changed up was not so fortunate.

We recently visited a friend of ours who works on a chicken farm in Devon. We arrived just in time to see the chickens being let out into their new pasture, sadly something spooked the chickens and a large proportion of the 7000-plus birds escaped over the fence. My cattle instincts instantly kicked in and I ran to the bottom of the field to stop the gap, my delight to reach the gap before the chickens was shattered when I turned around to see everybody else on site not panicking and finding my actions rather amusing.