winter

How you can tell winter is coming

/ dairymilkmaid / 8 Comments

New pastures are flushed with growth.

New pasture soaks up the sun

New pasture soaks up the sun

The ground is still warm and dry enough for bare feet.

TractorWork

The cows are ebullient.

ButterHeads

The brilliance of our wildlife is unmissable.

The marvellous moorhen

The marvellous moorhen

But, there’s this.

Is this the beginning of the end?

Is this the beginning of the end?

Winter is inevitable and so are rubber boots. In turn comes twisted, slithering southwards socks – enough to test the patience of a milk maid at the best of times, let alone when struggling through mud.

My trusty ones from last season have had it, so now I’m on the hunt for socks that will stay true all day long. There are plenty of great work socks for blokes but their wide toes mean uncomfortable bunches at the tips of my boots. Any recommendations?

Let them eat cake

/ dairymilkmaid / 6 Comments

Good quality hay is like bread. Dairy cows love it for its balance of fibre, energy and protein. This winter, you cannot buy good quality hay for less than a king’s ransom, if you can buy it at all. So, with none to be had, we’ve been forced to get creative, introducing three different delicacies for the cows.

Almond hulls
At first, I wondered if the cows would ever eat this stuff. The smell is nice but almond hulls look like a mix of sawdust and fine wood chips.

Delicacy of the day: almond hulls

Delicacy of the day: almond hulls

Each cow gets an average of 5kg of the hulls each day but, judging by the way they wolf it down, I reckon they want more!

The 5 o'clock swill

The 3 o’clock swill

Trying to push the cows past a heap of almond hulls is like trying to push back the tide. Run one side of the ring and they’re already attacking the side you just left. Not because they’re starving, either. The cows are getting lashings and lashings of energy and nutrient-rich food – they just love the stuff!

Mmmmm, delicious

Mmmmm, delicious

Straw for scratch fibre
Although the almond hulls are fibrous, the cows need long fibre to wake-up their complex digestive systems, so they’re getting a couple of bales of straw as well (though they like to use it as a luxurious mattress, it seems).

Goo for the good bugs
Also new to our cows is a special brew delivered in fancy red tubs. A mixture of molasses, non-animal protein and minerals, the goo is not really for the cows. It’s for the bugs that digest their food in one of those four stomach chambers called the rumen. The idea is that the “goo for good bugs” turns them into super-bugs that can release the maximum value from everything the cow eats.

It’s a sweet-and-sour mix designed to stop the cows gorging themselves on the goo but they still seem to enjoy a generous swig on the way in and out of the dairy!

RedTrough

Grain for breakfast and dinner
The cows continue to enjoy two sittings of corn, barley, wheat and minerals each day during milking.

Most important of all – juicy, juicy grass
Despite all the other stuff on the menu this winter, nothing is more important to our cows than grass.

WintryPasture

Are they missing their hay? I think not.

The silver lining to the big dry

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FloodJune14Std

I thought we’d “only” had 93mm but it was actually more like 144mm (that’s more than 5 and half inches) in three days. Normally, that would have been a massive disaster. Instead, it’s moderate flooding and, so long as the weather gods hold their tempers for a while, we’ll have dodged a bullet.

Such a relief.

I put our narrow escape down to the lingering effects of the exceptionally dry summer and autumn of 2012/13. While the pastures were green last week, you only had to dig down a few inches before the soil became very dry. The catchment sopped up most of this rain like a giant jade sponge before it got to the waterways.

The weather bureau is forecasting a warmer and wetter than average winter and although it has very little confidence in that seasonal rainfall outlook, the forecasters are actually very good at predicting temperatures. A warm winter would be welcome indeed. Fingers crossed!