Farm Diary

WARM and wet (very) seems to be the order these days, and I thank my lucky stars that all the calves have gone. The clearing up operation continues, with all the temporary calf pens we built out of straw bales now joining the muck heap in the maize field.

The rabbits are seriously damaging my new grass ley at Crouchlands, and have followed the drills up and down the field, nibbling all the young shoots. We have shot a fair few of them, but they continue to inflict real damage as we now approach winter; I am very concerned.

We decided to paint the milking parlour the other day, which sounds fairly straightforward until you consider that it is running most of the day, and is soaking wet after washing down at the end of milking. I got the bright idea that what we needed were several large gas space heaters, and some nocturnal volunteers!

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After evening milking we set up the space heaters, and by 10.00pm the parlour was warm and dry. Six of us painted the whole thing in two hours flat, and the heaters were left on all night to dry this new paint finish, before the cows came in to try and lick it all off the walls in the morning.

I volunteered to get up extra early (no one else seemed keen!), to switch off and remove the heaters before the first shift arrived at 4.30am. The paint had dried beautifully, and to be on the safe side, the lads were asked not to put too much power behind the hosepipe for a day or two.

With new roof lights and the white paint, the parlour looks very bright and clean. We had painted the dairy a nice shade of blue recently, but I felt we needed more light in the parlour, so we have gone from light blue to white. Time will tell if it was a good idea or not. Now that we have cracked the painting operation, I am keen to follow with another coat before too long, so we can build a nice layer of rubberised paint on the walls.