Mrs Down's Diary January 7 2009

'AWAY in a foldyard' a little heifer calf was born. Quite a surprise this Christmas arrival. We were not expecting to start calving until early January but, as ever, things have turned out differently to our master plans.

"I thought something was happening in the foldyard from the commotion the dogs were making in the middle of the night," John had said. "The cows must have been all excited about the birth and chasing the calf around as it took its first steps."

His latest project came to fruition in time for the new arrival. For the previous week he had been repairing our muck spreader with plate- metal sides and lid. The new regulations for spreading manure will mean that in a year's time our manure-management plan must be in line with national policy.

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This policy starts this month but we are allowed a year's exemption to organise a holding area for slurry, etc.

The body of our muck spreader was badly rusted. The actual mechanism, the chains for throwing out the muck, is fine but the sides and top of the muck spreader were so corroded that the liquid slurry would have leaked all over before it had a chance to be flung out on to the fields.

For this reason John hired a big new machine to spread the rotted-down foldyard straw in the autumn. But we badly needed something to cope with the twice-weekly clear-out of the silage clamp area and the front of the main foldyard.

John had looked at a few muck spreaders in farm sales. It is not economic to buy a new one as we know that we will not be able to spread muck as we do now in the future.

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To establish exactly what we should be doing, we are attending a training session in January. But there will have to be some way to cope with the clean-out sessions, as a herd of cows do not listen to anyone from Defra on how to restrain their natural tendencies to evacuate.

What is important in cleaning out the foldyard is to ensure that any concrete areas are not reduced to slippy and slidy morasses of muck, especially with newborn calves now in the equation.

Calving so early reminds me of a Christmas Day many years ago when we were actually snowed in but needed the services of a vet to calve a heifer that had spent Christmas Eve struggling with a calf.

By Christmas morning John had exhausted his bag of tricks so we brought the vet to the farm on the tractor, as four-wheel-drives were comparatively rare in those days.

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In true James Herriot fashion he stripped off to the waist and needed a copious supply of hot water. Cannot remember why.

After safely delivering the calf, he shared our Christmas lunch with us, as he had missed his own at home. Since then we have rarely had a white Christmas or Christmas calving. It could all change this year.

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