Robin Talbot: Common sense prevails when it comes to yellow tags

Reason seems to have triumphed. It’s not often that I compliment the department, but credit where credit is due.

At the time of writing, we are about 30 days away from the first cow calving. Apparently all cows are now weaned.

lame

We sent all the cows through the cattle shed and picked out any that were lame or had long toes and put them in their own paddock.

There were 29 of them so last week we called John Delaney our local hoof trimmer who sorted them out.

He wrote down the tag number of all cows that have chronic foot problems and they are not bred again.

The cows went through the crowd again later in the week to sort them into three groups by predicted calving date: July, August and September.

We are very happy with the health of the cows and they are very shiny.

The July calves got their IBR live vaccine and also their Rotovac Corona vaccination. Ideally, the Rotovac should be given at least a month before calving so that later calves can finish in time.

All calves, bulls and heifers have a shot of Animec for worms and hoose. Hopefully that will last until autumn.

However, last year we had to treat a group of bulls in August. Her thriving was definitely compromised, so we’ll be watching closely for coughs and moving in to treat her immediately.

The bull calves have almost two months left on the pasture before they are taken to the barn for fattening, so it is important to keep them healthy with lots of nice, fresh grass in front of them.

Supplying fresh grass becomes a bit of a challenge in this area as we are bordering on drought conditions. We should be fine for a couple of weeks but after that we might start to worry.

Since we have quite a lot of cows in the last two weeks of July, we also have to remember to build up some grass for them when they calve.

We haven’t put any fertilizer on the pastures since the beginning of May. So we need to grab this nettle and give some away when the weather changes. The fields are just too dry to get a worthwhile answer.

When grass is scarce, when the cows are calving, we have round bales of silage and hay to use.

A task that we will have to do soon is cleaning the cattle sheds; and hose down the fins with a power hose. We will also hose down the cattle pens as we will be dumping grain there.

It looks like there will be an early harvest for the winter barley. It has started to mature. The harvest looks quite promising, so keep your fingers crossed.

I recently attended an excellent event at Jimmy Madigan’s mother cattle farm near Ballyhale, Co. Kilkenny, organized by the Irish Grassland Association.

I was impressed by the high quality of the pastures and farming infrastructure, but what really struck me was the sight of hedge after hedge of mature timber.

I would say these hedges have seen changes for more than a century.

In Ireland, a mindset seems to have developed that this type of habitat is incompatible with commercial farming, but this farm shows that not only are they very happy bedfellows, they actually complement each other.

Robin Talbot farms in Ballacolla, Co. Laois with his mother Pam and wife Ann