Turnout time - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Wednesday 12 March, 2014

by Rosemary Champion at 4:43pm in Cattle 1 comment Add your own

The two cows, heifer and heifer calf were housed on 20th December. It was the first time in the new barn extension and, with usage, there are a couple of modifications to be made before next winter - and I won't be bedding the feed area, as it proved impossible to keep it adequately clean. So next year, I'll just clean it every day and deep bed the lying area.

We applied pour-on a couple of weeks ago with the intention of turning them out this weekend coming but Dan was at home yesterday, it was a lovely day and a good forecast for the next five days, so we decided to put them out in the afternoon.

It takes three trips - our trailer will only take one mature cow plus a calf (and the car just manages to pull it fully loaded) - so Blizzard, as boss cow, went first. She's the hardest to load. Then Annie, who's a dream to load; then Breeze and Bonny. I've been doing a bit of haltering with Bonny over the last few weeks and she was good as gold yesterday - walked up the ramp, cool as a wee cucumber :-)

The boys - George, Storm and Charlie - were very excited and I was a wee bit worried about the girls, but within 20 minutes, they had all settled down - except Bonny and Charlie, who were having races round the field. Breeze tried to stay with Bonny at first - the concerned mother - but quickly decided that grass was better.

They're all fine today - enjoying the sun and the grass.

Now we have to get the barn mucked out ready for lambing at the end of the month. The chap we get our hay from has offered to bring down a machine to do it, which is preferable to a wheelbarrow and graip. And he's happy to be "paid" in beef, which is even better. Oh, and the trailer needs washed - tomorrow's job :-)

It's very quiet here without the cows, though :-(