Winter jobs

Posted in Farm on Wednesday 31st December 2014 at 6:57pm

The obvious jobs are the daily task of feeding silage to the cows, scraping the yards of slurry, spreading new straw on the cattle beds and breaking ice on the water troughs. During this time we also check the cattle over to make sure they are healthy with no foot problems from being on concrete floors or eye problems like silage eye. In January we will treat all the adult cattle for liver fluke and later with a mineral supplement bolus to counter the low levels of copper, cobalt and selenium and various other trace elements on our farm. Towards the end of winter we will wean the cows to give them a rest before they calve again in spring. With the short amount of daylight to work in outside and long dark nights it is time to start the workshop jobs in earnest; servicing all the machines in our new workshop, mending and creating new pieces of kit to make our work easier or more efficient. When the weather and soil conditions are right the tractors are fired up for dung spreading or hedge trimming (we are only allowed to cut hedges between 1^st Jan and 28 Feb). This is just a small sample of what needs to be done and I haven’t even mentioned the office work. This time of year is often referred to as the quiet time of year – I have yet to work out why!