FARMERS are always checking the weather forecast, especially this year when it seems to be making farming operations particularly difficult.

The past week has once again seen some warm sunshine, clouds and breezes punctuated with irritating showers.

During the week the combine harvester managed to finish harvesting 25 acres of winter barley on Stowell Farm, but only managed eight acres here on Manor Farm before the weather stopped the combine from being able to gather any more grain. All our winter barley is now ripe and beginning to go rather flat and twisted, which will make it very difficult to harvest when the weather hopefully becomes more favourable.

However, the week has not been without its anxieties concerning our cattle. A year has passed since our last TB test, so on Monday a vet arrived to test our herd.

The young heifers, in-calf heifers, dry cows, and Faithful, our Aberdeen Angus bull, had been gathered into fields close to the farm buildings so that testing could begin promptly at 9am that morning.

Fortunately the skin test was administered to these cattle without any problems, which is always a relief, even Faithful was very obliging. The milking cows were tested after milking the same day, to cause them as little stress as possible. They soon realised that something out of routine was going on, but the test was completed without incident.

Then there was the long agonising wait until Thursday, when the skin tests were read.

Once again the animals were gathered ready for testing, with Faithful leading the way through the race into the cattle crush, where each animal was held, to enable the vet to check the neck of each animal for a reaction to the skin test, which shows as lumps on the injection sites.

On day one each bovine had been tested by clipping the hair from two sites on the neck, a skin thickness recorded for each site using calipers and an injection of avian and bovine tuberculin administered.

On day three it was the thickness of the skin at the two sties on each animal that was measured. An animal will fail if it shows a positive bovine more than 4mm greater than a -ve or +ve avian reaction. There was a sigh of relief when the last cow was checked and the vet told us that the herd was clear.

As the young heifers were going through the cattle crush for their TB reactions to be checked they were given a vaccination to protect them against Leptospirosis. Leptospirosis is a common infection causing infertility, abortion and poor milk yield.

On Stowell Farm Kevin has had a busy week. He has been topping some grass at Bowood, and he has also ensiled some more grass and lucerne. Some of the store lambs have been wormed and the first finished lambs have been taken to St Merryn, Wales. The main flock ewes have been given their MOT, checking teeth, udders, feet and body condition. Any ewes not passing the test will be culled and those with a poor body condition score will be separated out so that they can be given better food. The 18-month-old ewes (shearlings)were vaccinated against chlamydial (enzootic) abortion and toxoplasma abortion, which are the most common of a wide range of organisms capable of causing abortion in sheep. The vaccination will give the young ewes immunity before they are put with the rams.