Our weather this January was very different to that of the same month last year.

This January, only 90mm of rain fell, compared with 191mm in 2014.

Although the ground is not particularly dry in places, at least we are able to spread dirty water from our large slurry store onto some of the drier pasture that will be cut for silage later in the year.

Ian has been busy doing this job, which he tells me seems an endless task, even with our larger tanker.

The number of seagulls attracted to the fields Ian was spreading on was unbelievable. I do not think I have ever seen so many gather together, feasting on all the “tasty” morsels of food found in the watery slurry .

While on the subject of slurry, Richard was called at 5am on Sunday to repair one of the scrapers, which moves very slowly up and down the passage between the cubicle beds to keep them clean.

The scraper is pulled along by a moving chain, but on this occasion a link had snapped, so it had come to a grinding halt.

I can think of nothing worse than getting out of a warm bed, in the early hours, to repair a slurry scraper.

Richard has also done some welding, repairing the spike which fits on the front arms of the loader tractor; an essential attachment for moving large round bales, which can weigh up to a quarter of a tonne. The base of one of our trailers had rusted badly, so a new one was collected and bolted into place.

Feed pellets for our weaned calves were collected from a mill in Calne, using a tractor and trailer. Getting the food in bulk was considerably cheaper than having it delivered in small bags.

The feed ration given to the milking cows has presented us with a slight problem. They are fed grass silage as part of their diet, which is mixed with a number of other foods in the feed wagon before being given to them.

However, the grass now at the front of the silage clamp is from last year’s second cut, which is rather dry.

In fact, it has a dry matter content of almost 50 per cent, when the ideal is a dry matter of 30 to 35 per cent. It is usually quite unstable, as it cannot be consolidated well. Fortunately, ours seems fine.

Richard and Ian found that, as cows moved the food with their noses, some of the added nutrients were dropping through the mix, leading to some getting more than their required share.

It was suggested it would be a good idea to add some water to the mix; not an easy feat to accomplish, especially when conditions are frosty.

The addition of water would bind the food together, stopping the nutrients from separating so easily.

After discussion on how best to add the water, a small plastic tank was positioned on an elevated plinth and filled daily. From here the water can easily be added to the ration in the feed wagon.

We had one calf born this week, an Angus x bull calf, normally black, but this has a small patch of white on its body and some white socks.

Its mother is a Dutch red and white holstein called Mana, born in Holland on May 23, 2009, and on Manor Farm since August 2011. She has just had her fifth calf and all have been bulls, so we have none of her offspring in our herd.

In her last lactation, she gave 12,754 litres of milk, with a fat content of 4.06 per cent, protein 3.62 per cent, lactose 4.12 per cent and a low somatic cell count of 58, indicating udder health when it is below 200.