It’s organised chaos at times but we are moving full steam ahead

THIS IS my favourite time of the year as spring approaches and calves and lambs start appearing in the sheds.

The saying of ‘organized chaos’ used to describe the activities on the street of China’s bigger cities could be used to describe our farmyard at the moment. But I have everything under control as the farm moves full steam ahead for another year

With the weather being reasonably dry over the past few weeks we spread another 60,000 gallons of slurry on the silage ground on the out farm at 2000 gallons per acre. All tanks have been lowered to levels that should see out the winter comfortably enough, even if it is prolonged with bad weather in late spring.

I like to get large amounts of slurry out at this time of the year as it seems to give great results, especially when applied to bare ground. And it even works better when a small amount of fertiliser is applied once the slurry is washed in.

Due to the mild weather, I have had to treat most of the cattle for lice again. They all were treated back in December with a pour on and it worked fine up until now. In the last few weeks they have started to lick themselves and scratch off the gates and drinkers.

They just seemed uneasy and it was too far away from turnout be leave them. This time I decided to use a spray application.

While at first it seems a very labour intensive job, it turned out to be very effi- cient. I used the quad bike sprayer and as the animals passed up through the cattle crush I applied a fine mist on the whole of their body with the hand lance of the sprayer.

They didn’t seem to mind as it was the same as standing in a light shower for them.

One pen of the suckler cows with a lower condition score than the main herd of cows are now getting 1kg of meal per day just to give them a little more strength at calving and to make sure they have adequate milk after they calve. Calving won’t get into full swing till March as we operate a low cost spring calving herd that calves as close to grass as possible.

In saying that this year I am going to have to make a better attempt to get cows and their calves out of the sheds as early as possible, weather permitting, as last year a lot of extra work was created by not getting them out.

As a host farmer for Gurteen Agriculture College, early February means the arrival of the new student on their three-month work placement.

This year Shane Kelly from Co Galway is the new man joining the team. The placement is a very important time in the student education.

I try to encourage the students to get the most out of their work experience and learn as many new skills as possible.

I should also add that I never fail to learn some-