ANOTHER week with spring in the air! There have been periods of warm sunshine, although chilly breezes still seem to be prevalent. Hedgerows are white with blackthorn blossom, trees bursting into leaf, skylarks singing as they hover in the sky, buzzards enjoying the chance to float on rising thermals and an abundance of spring flowers.

I saw my first butterflies of the year, a Red Admiral and Yellow Brimstone, which both hibernate as adults. Now it just remains for our swallows to arrive.

Whilst our cattle were being tested for TB we used the opportunity to give the autumn-born calves their second oral vaccination against lungworm, prior to turning them out to grass for the first time.

Cattle will acquire immunity through exposure, but first-season grazing calves will be very susceptible to infection.

The lungworm larvae are ingested during grazing, penetrate the intestinal wall form where they migrate to the lungs via the blood.

The adult worms that develop in the lungs are then coughed up, swallowed and returned to the pasture where their life cycle will begin.

Also during testing a percentage of randomly selected animals from our group of 18-month-old heifers were tested for BVD (bovine viral diarrhoea).

This infection can affect all ruminants and is a very debilitating disease transmitted through congenital infection of the foetus or after birth.

Calves congenitally infected can continuously shed BVD in the farm environment, so making sure that it is not present on our farm is very important. Fortunately the results were all negative.

Now the ground has dried a little more field work has continued. On both Manor and Stowell Farms fertiliser has been spread onto grass and cereal crops.

Fertiliser planning is central to nutrient management, influencing yield and quality of crops.

When planning fertiliser applications note must be taken of all other sources of nutrients, including fixation by legumes, deposition from the atmosphere and incorporation of organic matter into into the soil. There are also a number of regulations regarding fertiliser application and records must be kept.

Our agronomist has also called to help us make a decision on the cropping of two of our fields.

A field due to be planted with spring barley will now be sown with maize, swapping the spring barley to the other field. The field scheduled to be planted with spring barley is far too wet and at the moment covered with a variety of weeds.

Planting it later with maize will enable us to provide a cleaner, drier seed bed.

Richard has done all the ploughing he can do at the moment, then cleaned the plough ready for use when the remaining ground is dry enough. Ian and Nathan have been doing some fencing, preparing grazing fields for turnout, which will hopefully be very soon.

During the week I have been very busy guiding classes of primary school children around Roves Farm. It is truly springlike there with recently born pygmy goat kids, rabbit kittens, piglets, calves and lambs.

Some of the children were even lucky enough to see the birth of twin lambs.

The weather during the week made the school visits particularly enjoyable, especially the tractor rides, when we were able to spot lots of birds, butterflies and even an obliging deer that was quite happy to pose for photographs.