Time to say goodbye

Here is how you repair a country road in Sweden, cork coco should take note.

Was trying to find photos of the zero grazing set up we have up my phone died recently so lost everything I had in it. Valtra has a front linkage and we have a front mower on that, old silage wagon behind to pick up the grass and then leave it out along feed passage.

Being making silage bales here for a few years now but before that it was the wagon that was used to put silage into a pit like at home. But there's was a lot of waste if there were a number of cuts. Silage over here tends to be lots of small cuts throughout the summer they are amazed when I tell them about the heavy cuts we have in Ireland.

Going to put maize into the silage pit this year, a but if an experiment but we ll see how it goes.

Well folks are ye all happy to see a bit of drying? Was home a few weeks ago and driving down from Dublin airport there was still a lot of flooding around.
Sister was saying that they are hoping to have the 1st lot out on grass this weekend.

Cattle won't be out here till the end of the month, still cold enough here but it's been a mild enough winter not much snow but plenty of rain in December and jan. Locals keeping saying I have brought the irish weather with me.

So a bit of an update on winter round here. Not much different to home in that the cows have been in since November but they won't be out for a bit yet. Most cattle are inside all the time, sheds are much warmer here as they a made from wood (or maybe it seems that way). Heifers are actually out on kale during the day and in at night. Calving season has just started for us this week 5 heifers and a bull so far, plan to have them all calved by the end of the month. Been doing a lot of traveling since Christmas but will be based at home for next while so that will be good for checking the cows.

Still getting used to the cultural changes but I'm usually home every 5-6 weeks for a few days with work so not too bad.

After the last few months of milking and weighting up our options I'd say it's nearly 75% sure that we will get a robot in a year or 2. We will take the dairy herd to about 70 and graze the fields around the yard for the summer then milk from the shed up to Christmas and in spring. OH wants to run a beef herd too and is planning on setting up a farm shop with a few other locals. I really noticed that milking 40 cows 3 times a day during the summer takes up a lot of time so if we upped to 100 or so the cost of new parlour wouldn't be much more then the robot, and much more support for them here as they are much more common.

Have been using a diet feeder for the 1st time recently OH has been earning few extra bob feeding cattle on neighbouring farm. A full load does all his per day so he said we can use it on ours afterwards. So she brings it back here fills it and feeds ours a that does 2 days, empties it tomorrow before doing the neighbours. We made some maize to mix with the silage and I reckon we will do the same again next year.

Big difference over here is that amount of machinery sharing, very different to back home. BIL is a contractor so we borrow stuff from him if we need it but I do notice that plenty of the neighbours share gear. Most farmers will have just the one tractor (usually a decent sized one with a loader) but would only have a small bit of other gear of their own. Stuff like mowers, wrappers, seed drills, slurry tankers and combines are owned and shared by a couple of similar sized farms. There wouldn't be a culture of folks taking the piss.