Livestock/General Farming photo thread ***READ MOD NOTE IN POST #1***

johnpawl wrote: »

another bzb running around the field this morn:) off a pied cow



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how long have you the cows out ,the calves look big ,are they on straw at all or are you not worried,they look big and hes ment to be easy calving,i have some cows in calf to him for the end of the year and you have me thinking:o.great cows and sucks by the way.

leg wax wrote: »

johnpawl wrote: »

another bzb running around the field this morn:) off a pied cow



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how long have you the cows out ,the calves look big ,are they on straw at all or are you not worried,they look big and hes ment to be easy calving,i have some cows in calf to him for the end of the year and you have me thinking:o.great cows and sucks by the way.

Hi JP,

Fine team there.. What breeding is the cow apart from AA.. She has a great bag of milk, she should make a great job of that fella by oct!

Replaced some old fence yesterday. I need to build two block pillars on the top of that hill and stick a gate between them, there's no depth for the stakes and it's where I open the fence to let the lambed ewes down into grass. One ewe was "stalking" me while I was pulling out the old fence, just waiting for me to leave the hole in the fence so she could run through

Muckit wrote: »

Is that a boundary or internal fence John? It must be a bi**h trying to stretch sheep wire with all the humps and hollows :mad: I see from looking on youtube, that the Kiwi's prefer to use 9 strands of plain wire for this reason, with battens between the stakes to keep the wire spacings.

That's an internal fence. The bare part is the rougher side of the farm where I feed the sheep prior to them lambing. Then I move them through that fence as they lamb so I can make the most of my grass (or at least I hope I'm making the most of it!

It can be a trial to stretch it alright. There isn't much depth in a lot of those places so it's also very hard to find a good solid post to attach the chain and ratchet to. All the same I seem to be able to keep the sheep where I want them

I've got plans to erect more internal fences to manage the grazing, control weeds with spraying, and generally improve the place. So I'll have to get my thinking hat on for easier ways to go about it.

Doing that job yesterday I realised I hardly ever bother with proper strainers. Instead chancing my arm there'll be two strong stakes together or a stake jammed between two large rocks in a wall. Sometimes that works in my favour, and sometimes, like yesterday, it doesn't I suppose it's from struggling to find depth for a 6 foot stake, then thinking about an 8 foot strainer, lol.

If I was to try single strand I'd nearly go electric. I believe the ESB do fairly cheap connections if it's just for fencer use.

johnpawl wrote: »

She's off a piedmontese AI bull, so there should be muscle in the background. I bought her as a calf off a neighbouring dairy farmer so I think she's PI from FR cow, might be AA in there too. Plenty milk alright, be interesting to see a part/pied cross.

Super outfit there, and the cow in great condition. That'll be a super calf once he gets to grips with that bag of milk!
A good milky cow like that is one I'd be looking at to breed a replacement. Any plans to do that with her?

Bizzum wrote: »

Super outfit there, and the cow in great condition. That'll be a super calf once he gets to grips with that bag of milk!
A good milky cow like that is one I'd be looking at to breed a replacement. Any plans to do that with her?

I put the part on her hoping for a heifer to keep, but a healthy calf is good enough! This is a ch heifer she had last year that I'm holding onto.



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Nice lush green colour on the near side of the fence there John - Looks good

Tipp Man wrote: »

Nice lush green colour on the near side of the fence there John - Looks good

Yeah, it's been a nice colour for a while now but there is some decent spots of grass in it. Problem is lambs will start any day now and with this cold nothing is growing, won't take a score of ewes long to do a bit of mowing. But, we're all in that same boat I had better grass last year, but I did put out my fert earlier than I did this year. Idea was that the grass would be growing with the sheep rather than having too much too soon, have to wait and see how that pans out.