Archive Article: 2000/08/04
John Glover
John Glover milks 140 cows
on his 52ha (130-acre)
county council holding near
Lutterworth, Leics. The
business is run in partnership
with neighbouring tenant
Mark Wilks, with dry cows
and youngstock kept at Mr
Wilks 32ha (80-acre) farm
WE are trying our hand at haymaking at the moment. Most of it was a silage field that we cut in the middle of May. It had been strip-grazed until it got too far ahead of the cows.
The other smaller piece was part of a field we use as a loafing area for high yielders, but our cows being lazy did not want to walk to the far end of the field and so it ran to seed and we closed about 1ha (2.4 acres) a month ago.
We cut the first smaller piece on Monday and the rest the following day. The weather was set warm and sunny for the week but towards the end it became cloudy and overcast with the odd spot of drizzle. We are now waiting for a couple of good drying days to finish the job, I think perhaps we should stick to silage.
We are still busy calving. We have had about 50 calvings in the last eight weeks, of which about half were Friesan. Despite averaging about 50% heifers overall, only eight have been Friesian heifers and 14 Friesian bulls.
The heifers are by bulls such as Rosparry Thor and Norrielake Cleitus Luke. Another three heifers are in-calf to Carol pre Mtoto, fortunately the first one of these to calve had a Friesian so we hopefully will end up with 25 heifers for the year.
We will have calved 42 heifers by Christmas and with about the same number to calve next year we can hopefully keep a few less the year after.
If we do not cull any more cows we could have about 165 head at housing, this is about 25 more than we were planning for. There are 10 cows we plan to cull, but some of these may not go until after the new year when they are in late lactation.
Last year I culled 20% of the herd, but this year with extra heifers it will be nearer 30%. This gives us more opportunity to improve the herd and now the weight limit on Over-30-Month Scheme cattle is lifted it means extra income as well.
Still busy calving, but John Glover would like his Friesans to have a few more heifers before they finish calving, so he ends up with 25 this year.