March in a Nutshell

For us March has been a quiet time and I apologise for the lack of blogs but we managed to squeeze in a holiday.

First a glance at what has happened on the farm.

1st March, or thereabouts, the rest of the rams were introduced to the ewes.  This was touched on in the last blog.

We weighed up the last of our lambs, gave them a drench and parked them to go to the works in March.  They were suppose to have gone, but have been delayed a week due to a mishap at the works.  They have done well in the meantime, so fingers crossed for a good carcass weight.

End of February, saw us doing the whole farm covers.  Despite the growthy season we were sitting at 2100 kgDM/ha cover over the whole farm, with the finishing country at 2350 kg DM/ha average.  There is some rough feed on the hills, but this will slowly be consumed through the rest of autumn.  The finishing country is looking in good health.

The dairy heifers received their second zinc bolus treatment against Facial Eczema.  Spore counts have maintained slight to high (http://www.rd1.com/dairy/facial-eczema/waikato-spore-counts) but are below last years peaks.  The weaners were all weighed at this time and have averaged 0.67 kg/hd/day over 100 days (for kiwi cross).  Making them 169.4 kg average.  This puts in line with industry of between 165 - 177 kg at 200 days approximately from birth.  If we can maintain 0.65 kg/hd/day over next 60 days or better, will but them at 210 kg 1st May.

We then sneaked away for holiday, and were lucky enough to find Craig who moved in and looked after the place.  He did an absolutely wonderful job doing all the stock movement, a bit of fencing, looking after the dogs, chooks and cat, and when we came back we just had to carry on.  Great peace of mind while we were away and often as farmers we can't get long breaks due to the requirements on farm.

On our return, we had also had the digger in.  Main role was to metal the high use areas of the yards, remove dirt/mud from truck access area, metal it, put in a culvert and recontour our lawn.  So things a looking a litte different. 


Trees gone and dirt added!  Might get to have a flat front lawn!

With Alice camping at Ma and Pa's house for 13 days, she was pleased to get home and has been helping dad out on the farm this week.  Today though we decided to take her training wheels off and after the usual moral support and help, she was off without her wheels.  We have little suitable area for her to bike on about from up and down the drive which is good getting down, not easy to get back, and lots of bumps.  So today we suggested she tries the sheep yards.

Alice trainer wheel free in the sheep yards

And then we persuaded her to cycle back from the yards to the house and hoped that she could remember to use her breaks before she crashed into the gate.  The sheep were a bit sceptical of her and made a b-line to get out of her way.