Diary

February 2015RSS feed

Bonnie surprises us all

Monday 9 February, 2015

by Rosemary Champion at 8:38pm in Cattle 1 comment Comments closed

According to when we put the bull in, our four Shetland cows are all due to calve early May - Breeze and Blizzard for the fourth time, Annie for the second and Bonnie is a first timer.

At teatime, about 5pm, I started to feed everyone - hens, sheep, ponies, cattle - looked in the barn, and Bonnie was mooing and I could see liquid coming from her back end. I jagged them with Bravoxin on Saturday, without incident I thought, but the instructions do say to use in the third trimester. Ours are JUST in the third trimester and it was playing on my mind a bit. Two plus two made a hundred and twenty two!!!

Soil tests et al

Monday 23 February, 2015

by Rosemary Champion at 2:31pm in Grassland management 2 comments Comments closed

Do you ever start to do one small thing, and it grows into something bigger and bigger? Happens to me all the time - and it did yesterday. Actually, it happened three times yesterday but I'll relate one just now.

When someone tells me they've bought land, one of my first questions is "Have you had the soil tested for pH, P,K and Mg?" We had Dalmore tested in 2010 and again in 2013, but our rented grazing hasn't been tested since 2007 so I was thinking about soil testing Astwood this year and was, therefore, looking out an old invoice to see how much we'd paid last time.

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