THE past week has given us a taste of spring with a few warm, sunny days, but ended with a gloomy, damp day accompanied by a rather chilly northerly wind.

However, on Manor Farm there is an abundance of spring flowers lining the banks alongside hedges and ditches. On walks around the farm during the week the sight of primroses, violets, celandines, the emerging white flowers on blackthorn bushes in the hedgerows, trees starting to become adorned with leaves after their winter shut down and fresh green fields is truly beautiful.

Recently Rex, our agronomist, walked around the fields planted with cereal crops last autumn. He reported that on the whole the crops were looking very well, some of the wheat almost too well, being rather advanced in its growth stage for the time of year.

Patches of wheat were unfortunately showing signs of a fungal disease called septoria. This disease shows as pale brown to greenish-grey, mainly oval, lesions on the leaves, punctuated with tiny black spots and is more likely to be a problem following a relatively mild winter.

The advice was to spray the affected areas with a fungicide, which Ian has now done. If left untreated yield losses of grain can be reduced by as much as 50 per cent. He has also sprayed a herbicide on our fallow ground to rid it of weeds that germinated following successive cultivations. Meanwhile, Nathan has been spreading manure onto fields due to be planted with maize.

After the arrival of last week's twins two more of our cows have given birth to Aberdeen Angus x twins, but unfortunately one of the last to calve only had one live calf, the other being stillborn.

There are now only four cows left in the maternity wing, until the cycle of calving begins again in the autumn.

Nathan and Ian have spent a morning mucking out our six-month-old dairy heifer calves before bedding them up with a thick bed of fresh straw.

Recently our 18-month-old heifers have been moved into a barn with cubicle beds for a short spell before they are turned out onto grass. This is to get them used to sleeping in cubicles before joining the milking herd after having their first calves in the autumn.

Another task undertaken during the week was to mobility score the milking cow herd. The scoring was done by our vet, using a system devised to assess the prevalence of lameness (ie the number of animals lame at any one time in a herd). This is a useful way of identifying animals with a problem and monitoring progress following treatments.

To avoid confusion a four-point scoring system from zero to three has been agreed by the dairy industry. A score of zero means the cow can walk normally, with a score of three indicating that the cow is showing definite signs of lameness and is unable to keep up with the herd. Regularly mobility scoring the cows increases awareness of foot health and motivates actions, which can be monitored.

Another study started on Manor Farm was on antibiotic resistance, which is being done by a vet from Bristol University. Records of treatments given to cows and young stock will be followed, noting history and use of antibiotics.

The vet also walked around the yards used by each group of cattle with a pair of sterile boot covers over her footwear. The covers were taken back to a laboratory at the university where they will be used to plate up and grow the organisms found on our farm. The organisms will then be tested for antibiotic resistance.