Mrs Down's Diary

She has developed super-sensitive hearing, and nanoseconds after the scrape of the door opening she is on her feet, head lowered and bawling.

Straight after that, she has run towards the door to butt your legs and let you know she is there and hungry. But she wasn't.

John was concerned. A couple of days earlier he had found the calf in the silage yard under a fall of silage. Whether it is because it is warm, even in comparison to the yard with its cosy carpet of straw, the calf has taken to lying under the silage face.

The cows' access to the silage is regulated by a bar that is moved forwards every day to allow them to feed but does not permit them to clamber on to or into the silage and spoil or waste it.

Occasionally, if the cows pull the silage from the bottom, it creates an overhang of feed that topples down when it is unbalanced. The calf had been lying at the face when such a fall occurred but fortunately John was able to pull her clear before any harm could be done. Had she got trapped again?

No. She'd found a surrogate mum! There she was under an obliging cow, suckling away. Just what John had hoped for. She was not interested in the substitute milk any more.

Which left all the more for one of the twins. They were born at the end of the week and John has them partitioned away from the main herd so that they, or the cow, do not wander away from each other until the feeding and bonding is well established.

They have bonded but only one of the calves is suckling properly. The smaller calf is being pushed out by the bigger one and we are having to supplement the little one's feed.

Apart from these dietary concerns, the rest of the calves are doing very well and several of them seem to have formed a strong attachment to their dad.

The yards are very full, with all the cows from the suckler herd, the new calves, many of last year's bulls, heifers still to fatten and heifers that are being brought on to serve with the new bull.

The rate of birth of new calves has slowed down slightly but for nearly a fortnight we were getting a new calf daily. Mr Limousin had been a busy boy. There will be a break now in calving for a week or two. The herd calved in several batches so were not all ready for serving at once.

When we walk into the foldyard we go very steadily, as there might be a danger of the cows rushing around if disturbed and trampling one of the new calves, especially before they have learnt to be agile enough to get out of the way.

Until then, the calves have found their champion and place of safety: Mr Limousin, our lovely big brown bull. He lies there in majesty, chewing his cud, with often up to four or five of the calves snuggled up to him. The perfect baby-sitter. "He's a new man," I said to John. "Humph!" he replied. Not into new men, my husband.

This feature was originally in the West Sussex Gazette on February 20. To read it first, buy the West Sussex Gazette every Wednesday.