Hi Chris from Moos on Thames here.
We are now getting stuck into calving. This is one of our busiest times of the year so its all hands on deck. We will calve 150 cows through March and April. We calve in the spring so the cows can start grazing as the grass grows, working with nature.
I’ve already done one grass walk of the farm this year measuring the grass so I can make a grazing plan for the spring. This is called a spring rotation planner; the idea is to have the whole farm grazed by magic day (this is the day the grass is growing quicker than the cows can eat it). Usually around the middle of April. So, at the moment at the start of march the milking cows are out grazing during the day and are housed at night. As ground conditions improve and grass growth improves they will go out full time. The spring grazing plan means that I don’t run out of grass and don’t waste any either.
Because we had to feed a lot of silage in the dry summer last year, we haven’t got a lot of silage in stock. So, we are in need of a kind spring. We’ve had some snow and rain at the start of march which hasn’t helped grazing, but even when its wet we get the cows out for two hours to graze then get them back in before they start poaching the ground. This is made possible by the cow tracks that link up all the different paddocks. These are covered in used astro turf so its soft on the cow’s feet.
We had our tuberculous (tb) test in February. We have to have one every 6 months because we are in a high-risk area. If you have been watching Clarkson’s farm you would have seen how stressful tb testing can be especially for the humans. To everyone’s delight we got the all clear. We have been clear for a few years now but we have lost a lot of animals in the past so its always a worrying time. A positive test can be devastating for any farming business.
On the vending machine side, we continue to be amazed by the support shown by the local community. We believe the milk speaks for it self, once you have tried ours shop bought milk will never taste the same again.
We have made some changes to the coffee machine; we now have a decaff option and teas available. We have also been perfecting the art of getting Andy Rumming’s steaks to slide out of the vending machine.
Hopefully in the next month we should be getting our new milk vending machine, this will be able to do milk and milkshakes within the same machine. We’ve been waiting for this for a while so we are quite excited about it.
Thanks for reading this months farm update, if you have questions please email moosonthames@gmail.com
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