OH dear! Another week of mixed weather. Kevin would like to be able to start the combine working again, as he still has quite a large acreage left to harvest, but all his crops are, still too wet. He has, however, managed to cultivate and plant some of the harvested cereal fields with winter oilseed rape.

Here on Manor Farm the week began with an early morning call from Ian, informing Richard that some of the milking cows had escaped from their field. Fortunately not many of the cows had found the gap in the fence, which had probably been made by deer, so morning milking was only delayed for a short time. There was a vet visit during the week to do some pregnancy diagnoses on a number of the late calving cows. The milking cows being dried off are having their hooves trimmed, not coming into be milked for about two months prior to giving birth. This period of time is their annual holiday.

Mid-week, David our nutritionist, called in to help produce a milk forecast for each of the next 12 months, required by our milk buyer. This forecast is worked out taking into account previous yields, factoring in the number of cows and heifers due to calve each month, as well as those animals being dried off.

At the beginning of the week our first calf of the season was born. This was a very pretty bull calf, mainly white, but with attractively positioned black patches. After this birth calving gathered pace, with two heifer calves born the following morning, with 10 new calves on the farm by the end of the week.

The ley planted last week has germinated and can be seen as green rows of new grass across the field. The mixture of seeds planted consisted of a festulolium, a cross between a fescue and a ryegrass, with quality, disease resistance, high yield, winter hardiness and good mid-summer growth, which is good in a rotational grazing system.

Lolium multiflorum, another grass in the mixture, is an Italian ryegrass, native to temperate Europe. Two of the other varieties in the mix were ryegrass hybrids, with one called Lolium boucheanum being one of the best grass varieties available to the intensive farmer being a long-lasting, high yielding silage grass. This hybrid also has more tillers and leaf, so gives increased ground cover, better for grazing.

We have just replaced our crop sprayer and fertiliser spreader in order to reduce the number of tram-lines. Tramlines are parallel lines in crops that allow farmers to drive through their fields to fertilise and spray without causing damage to surrounding plants. Less tramlines will also reduce the area where soil can become compacted. Our old implements had a spreading width of 12 metres and their replacements can cover 20 metres, so field operations will be quicker.

Much of the field work done on Manor Farm has been of a mucky nature. Ryan has been taking solid manure from the slurry store to storage heaps in some of the fields waiting to be ploughed, but work was temporarily halted by a puncture in the trailer. The manure will be spread over the field, but the muck spreader needed some remedial welding before it could be used, a job done by Richard at the start of the week. Meanwhile Ian has been spreading more slurry.

While the cows are not using their winter housing, Richard, with Ryan's help, replaced one of the drinking troughs in the cubicle barn. Keeping a plentiful supply of drinking water for the milking cows is essential. A milking dairy cow may drink between 30 and 50 gallons of water each day.