Diary

Fat cowRSS feed

Posted: Thursday 22 September, 2011

by Rosemary at 7:31pm in Cattle 1 comment Comments closed

OK, OK - I admit it - my cows are fat. On Dalmore's good grass, Breeze and Blizzard have become a little beefy. They are square built but they are also carrying a bit too much condition. However, Viking seems to like a big girl, so hopefully, he's done his job.

I am writing no more about the cows now until they are confirmed in calf - the "is she, isn't she" saga is wearing me out and probably boring you to death, so no more until we have something positive to tell you.

Well, if anything else interesting happens with them, I'll diary it - but no more speculation on pregnancy.

I've downloaded and printed a Defra guide on condition scoring suckler cows, so I'll take that with me tomorrow when I go to see them. Ideally, at mating, cows should be on a rising plane of nutrition, so the fact that ours are a bit fat might impede pregnancy but it's also not the time to try and get some weight of them. Once they are in calf, the middle third of pregnancy is apparently the time to adjust condition so that they are not overfat at calving, which is not good either.

If they get in calf soon, the middle third of their pregnancies will be January, February and March, which would be a good time to slim them down. Next year, we'll have smaller paddocks and more sheep, so we should be able to manage the grazing better too. Oh, and the molassed mineral licks have gone smiley

Comments

Corrie Dhu

Saturday 24 September, 2011 at 11:23am

Hey half the fun is the "is she isn't she", isn't it?? I cannot wait til next week for some is she isn't she of my own!

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