New day…..

Firstly, must mention that I’m glad everybody else in the UK is now experiencing our rubbish weather now….

Still running about in all directions – one of our valued member of staff has failed to turn in for work for the last few days, for no apparent reason! Phone calls and texts have failed to contact him, so we have had to put an advert in the classifieds on Manx Net to try and replace him. Staffing on the island is difficult as there seems to be plenty of jobs about. We even attended a livestock show on the island some years ago, leaving a herdsman at home, to milk that afternoon. We came back to find he had taken off and had lined up a job in a bank, starting next day! Things are a little more difficult now, but there is still an attitude of not taking employment and employers’ predicaments seriously..

The feed wagon has finally died a death, so we are quickly trying to get the ATL ‘out of parlour feeders’ up and running! I have a box of tags ready to go in when we find the time inbetween covering for our missing employee, milking, plus covering for another worker who is off sick legitimately! We have been having trouble getting the cows to put their heads in the feeders, but have solved that (I hope) by smashing up mineral blocks and putting in sections to attract them.

Delivered 11 bull calves that were born this week today, to a local farmer who has taken on the brave task to rearing and fattening them. We are relieved that we don’t have to put calves down at the moment as there is no market here to handle them, or many people interested in doing anything with them!!! Sexed semen is very interesting, but the bulls we are using at the moment, do not have that option. As usual, we are finding that the AI bulls produce loads of bull calves, our own bulls running as sweepers in the main herd and as sires in the young stock produce the opposite!!!! Perhaps the AI bull semen has already been sorted???

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