We have finished sowing all the fertilizer and the grass is growing very quickly and there is a lot of it at present, in fact more than I have seen in early April for some years.

The cows went out on the 4th and they are enjoying munching away.

However as we go into May with all this grass I’m reminded of the old saying “If you have plenty of grass in May sell a cow if you have none buy one” we’ll see if this is true as the summer progresses.

We have had 3 calves born 2 black and white females and one black and white male however rota virus has claimed the male and one female so we have vaccinated the other cows due to calve in May and I shall now be vaccinating all in future.

We do not have a bull at Greenheyes and all the cows are got in calf by Artificial Insemination (A.I for short). We buy semen from a company called www.genusbreeding.co.uk and it is currently stored by them for us.

This is to change as I have bought a second hand storage flask and subject to a licence,we intend to store at the farm. It’s surprising what you can buy on www.ebay.co.uk

We intend to show the working of an AI man at a later date.

The maize seed has been delivered and we are currently waiting for Chris Richardson to come sowing it.

This year we may be putting in a maize maze contact me for further details as we (due to requests) are to allow some school visits this year.

Pollution of water by farm waste can be a problem and we have been giving our dirty water pump its annual strip down and maintenance.

This is generally to clear anything stuck in the mechanism and here we have two milk tubes these have found their way through the system to stick in the pump (how I’ll never know).

All the dirty water from the farm ends up in this tank and it is then pumped out and spread automatically through irrigators on to the fields.

In the old days such waste just was piped into the nearest ditch ending up in the river.

This picture shows a test run through one of the hydrants after maintenance. I’ll feature the irrigators in the future.

As I have mentioned my mother has been ill and we have been visited by my little sister Jean who lives in New Zealand. Click here for more.

This year the swallows arrived on the seventh which leads me to the nature report with three very different nests.

April has been wet with 57mm of rain for the month.

Unfortunately we hav been unable to aquire a replacement temperature sensor for our system, so it looks as if we will have to find new hardware for our weather page.

 

See you next month PHIL.

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