We’ve had a great start to September on the farm, with grass covers building nicely towards peak at the end of the month.

The cows are milking reasonably well, with excellent solids.

Butterfat is moving towards 5% and protein is closing in on 4%, but milk is starting to dip under the magic 20l mark a little sooner than we would like.

Meal feeding is down at 2kg and should stay at this level for the rest of September at least.

We took out some bales on that ground this week

The in-calf heifers are on good grass as well and this grass is building nicely towards the end of the month.

We took out some bales on that ground this week. We will get some slurry out there and build up a good cover of grass on those paddocks over the next two months.

The plan is to try and get a very high cover of grass on this baled ground now and defer the grazing of it until the second half of November. The quality should hold, as it was cut for silage and we will strip graze it over a few weeks in December, weather permitting.

We are also seeing some lameness in this group from scalds

We dosed the heifer calves this week as they had begun coughing in the last week or so.

We are also seeing some lameness in this group from scalds, so we foot-bathed them when we had them back in the yard.

Hopefully this will sort them out. We will keep them near the yard for a few days to make sure we get on top of the problem.

We weighed a few of these calves when they were handy, and they averaged 220kg so they are well on target for their age. We will have another look at them before housing, but if they continue to grow at that rate, we will keep concentrate feeding to the bare minimum over the winter. We can pull out a pen or two of smaller ones to feed on if necessary.

Ploughing

All roads lead to Carlow next week with the ploughing match being held near The Fighting Cocks in Tullow.

We have a cow selected to go on display on the Irish Holstein Friesian Association stand so we will be there most days to see how she’s getting on.

The long-range forecast looks good, so hopefully we can avoid the floods, mud and wind this year and have a somewhat normal event.

We don’t have much business to do this year, but there’s no harm in having a look around and hopefully the kids can get to go for a day out to see the sights as well.

Between tractors, cows and sports gear they should have plenty to amuse them.

World Cup

We have the Rugby World Cup to look forward to this month. It was great to get the chance to attend the last warm-up game in the Aviva last Saturday with Michael, our rugby-obsessed nine-year-old.

Rugby is a lot like farming; the harder you work at it, the luckier you get

We had a great day out and it was great to stay on at the end to say goodbye to Rory Best and Joe Schmidt as they appeared at the Aviva for the final time.

Hopefully their time in Japan goes well and we can live up to the title of world number one rugby team. Rugby is a lot like farming; the harder you work at it, the luckier you get.

They seem to have the hard work done, so hopefully we can get over the quarter final hurdle at last this year and give the tournament a right rattle.

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