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Down in Devon
September 2007
Hello to Everyone.
What a lovely month September has been, the sun has shone nearly everyday, it certainly makes
a big difference to everyone and everything when the weather is on your side.
The silage after grass had come on well and the cows have had plenty to eat and have milked
very well. We have started buffer feeding the milkers with some round bale haylage, this should help to keep the green grass in their bellies a bit longer and also help to keep the butter fat and
protein levels in the milk up too.
Because the weather has been so good we were able to plough and re-seed a 12 acre grazing
field in mid September, this field was badly poached up in the wet summer but is now looking good again, the seeds are just poking through now and hopefully will be fairly well established before any
frosts come.
Unfortunately all the milking cows and dry cows got infected with lung worm again and we had
to re-drench them all with Eprinex pour on wormer, as I mentioned before in a previous diary this is very expensive. Are there any other dairy farmers out there that have to Eprinex drench their
cows twice a year? (please let me know).
We started hedge trimming in September, and have nearly finished our farm, we do quite a bit
of contract trimming on other farms, which usually takes about a month to do.
We had a letter from Dairy Crest again saying that due to further increasing demands for dairy
produce worldwide and a big shortage of U.K. produced milk, they were going to raise the price of milk as from October 1st by 3 pence per litre. This is absolutely fantastic news and will make a
huge difference to all us dairy farmers. We received 20.700 pence per litre for our August milk.
Another massive blow to all farmers again on the 12th September, with a new case of Foot and
Mouth. Movement restrictions had just been lifted and we were able to start selling calves again, now everything is at a stand still once more. For us we still get an income from our milk,
but for those farmers who only sell livestock for their income, these times must be extremely difficult. The circumstances are even more annoying when the Foot and Mouth out break has been proven to
have been caused by a government owned laboratory!
I have enclosed the only livestock market report for this month.
All the best
From Steve, Down in Devon.
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