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Down In Devon April 2008
Welcome to spring time (or is it). The weather in April has been very cold and this has meant
grass growth is quite slow. We have put off applying the artificial fertilizer week by week, in the hope that the weather would come warmer. We can't afford to waste a single pellet of fertilizer
this year because the price per ton has more or less doubled since this time last year. £155.00 per ton then, £305.00 a ton now! However time and tide wait for no man and by about mid April we had
applied 3 c.w.t to the acre of 21.5.9 on the cutting fields and 1.5 c.w.t to the acre of 27.4.4 to the grazing ground. We turned the dry cows out on the 25th of April and the milking cows have been out for the last three days of the month, by day only. It's great to see the cows go out, they skip, jump and run around the field like new born lambs, the soil must be so much more comfortable for their feet than the concrete yards and cubicles they've been used to for the last six months!
Hopefully milk production will rise now with the fresh green grass to push yields. Cow cake
prices have been rising steadily all winter and now stand at £204.00 per ton for an 18% protein cake, so the extra milk will come just at the right time.
In the middle of the month we gave the second half of the Leptospirosis vaccination to all the
cows and heifers, so hopefully from now on we won't get any more abortions caused by this menacing disease.
I'm hoping that by the time I write Mays diary the 1st cut silage will be in the clamp, and every thing in the garden will be rosy!
See you next month,
All the best from
Steve
Down in Devon
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