Farmer Focus: Another flood brings Noah’s Ark to mind
© Kathy Horniblow The house got flooded again. Dehumidifiers are going in three rooms. Carpets are in the skip. But we are used to it.
We have plastic skirting boards and electric sockets three foot off the floor. The water doesn’t hang around, but the faint whiff of next door’s cow muck lingers.
Grazing the turnips and Westerwolds is our biggest problem at the moment. One lamb mob is using recent Halloween experience to feed themselves by turnip-bobbing.
See also: Environment Agency blamed for farm flooding devastation
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A few well-meaning people have complained about it. In our defence, all bunches of lambs have somewhere to lie and plenty of food.
But I agree, it looks awful. Fortunately, the next turnips are on a gradient, so I’m hoping it will improve as long as we don’t need Noah and his arkto get involved.
Calving has been good so far. We’ve had small, easily born calves up and sucking.
Once calved, cows get first-cut grass silage and maize. This is helping the cows to milk more compared with last year’s rubbish grass.
The metabolisable energy of the first cut was 11.6MJ/kg of dry matter versus 9.3MJ last year, and protein was 15.5% this year compared with 10.7%.
This should help the sheep too. A rough calculation for the ewe diet once housed shows a 55% reduction in the soya needed. This will boost our finances and green credentials.
Will supermarkets pay more for our Red Tractor lamb? I doubt it. So, who is going to put our story out there? How is the media policed?
You can’t let facts get in the way of a good story, it seems.
Sir David Attenborough states in Blue Planet that half the world’s natural habitats have been destroyed to grow food for animal production.
Since when? I’d like to know more and have some references please.
Sorry to go on. I’m just a little bit sick of food production and thinking that bees and butterflies don’t need electric fences and waders.
Good news: the first draw of lambs off the turnips made 300p/kg liveweight at market. They handled well.
Hopefully, we will now steadily market the 550 remaining before lambing starts again.
My experience of rain and wet fields leads me to think Noah must have picked a ram and ewe standing still in the water to go into the ark as all the others had already gone to higher ground.