A special delivery on the farm!

 

Last Sunday we took delivery of  a dozen weaned calves.  They will spend a couple of months in the shed then go out into the fields until October when we will sell them on to other farmers in October. We have no livestock November to January and then start again in February, it works well for us as we both work full time.

No matter how often we have done this there is always a frisson of excitement and anticipation when the calves arrive in their trailer.

They seem to have settled in well, this 'red' and white calf is a bit of a character and was having a good look out of the window!

Brian had a bit of trouble with the silage bale as it was quite soft and wouldn't stay on the spike.  However, it is excellent quality and the calves are eating it well.

How cute am I?

We had a delivery of calves last Sunday, this weekend was the first chance I had to take some photographs.  Mr Cutie above is a Charolais cross (all crossed with dairy cows) which is what gives him is lovely pale coat.

This one is a British Blue cross (they used to be called Belgian Blues), not so cute but looking bright.  He was tucking into some nice hay when I disturbed him.

Out to grass!

Time for the calves to go out for the summer, they get very excited when they see the big field in front of them and go a bit mad.

Their tails go up and they all set off across the field.

Some of them even fly!

Then they come racing back up to the gate again.

Two versions of the same thing!

Yesterday morning the sun was out and it was really warm. So we took our cooked breakfast outside and sat on the patio. The cows were grazing in the field making an idyllic pastoral scene behind us and Jenny the Cat decided to join us on the table. She was ejected as soon as the photo was taken!

The top LO is for Digital Craft Cottage, you can only post digi LOs using their kits or your own designs. The kit is Bugs and Butterflies by Muriel.

This LO is for Scrap Orchard - Apple Cart Challenge. The kit is provided free and you post it in their gallery. It was quite challenging to use only the pieces in the kit as there were not all that many. All the other LOs seem to have A's on their report cards, so I wanted to do something different, the report card is for Jenny and she 'could do better' in many areas hee hee! I did this LO first, then recreated it using the DCC pieces so I could post there too.

Rural Life

It was time for the calves to go out to grass this weekend. Before they go out they get a long acting worming bolus and a copper capsule, this involves putting them through the cattle crush before they get to go into the field. The photo below shows DH giving one of the calves it's worming bolus, you can't see it, but there is a device which goes down the calf's throat to deliver the bolus into it's stomach. Here are the calves, having their very first taste of fresh grass.

and here we are in all our glory, Massey Fergusson overalls, and yes, that is my tree that I'm journalling in the background.

Steven came over to help us out. It is much easier if you have more people to help get them from the shed into the cattle crush - they really don't want to go there.

HS:MS - Secure

Secure
Something that is fixed or fastened so as not to give way. Find something secure in your space today. The padlock on the 'cart-shed' door is secure - although the door is not in great shape!

The calves feeding gate is 'secured' by a chain - nosy calves!

My DH secures some of our dodgy old gates with those black strip thingies.

And we even go back to the old methods of securing things with binder twine, this is the plastic sort, but we have some of the sisal twine too.

The New Calves have arrived!

Here are some of our new calves. They arrived last night just before six o'clock, there are 17 of them and they are Belgian Blue cross bullocks. We buy them in already reared, so we don't have to feed them milk, they are on to concentrate and hay right from the start. It is really hard to take photos of them as they are very nosey and come right up to you.

It was frosty this morning with a bit of freezing fog, but that soon lifted, so it has been quite a nice day. DH has been out with his tractor and muck spreader, putting last years muck out on the fields. We still have an old-fashioned midden so the dung gets well rotted before it is put out, it doesn't even smell very much, unlike the horrible slurry that comes from the neighbouring dairy farms.