The Cows Tale!

Hello and welcome to my blog about my family farm here in the middle of Cornwall. My name is Irwin and together with my sister, her husband and their two boys we run a 500 cow dairy farm.

Farm facts are as follows. As I said we have 500 Holstein with a 305 day milk yield of 12 200 on twice a day milking, 39 litres per day, 4.3 fats, 3.35 proteins. With 4000 litres from forage.

September update-

The month started wet and rain every day from the 27th of August until the 20th of September, with the only jobs I could get done was the hedge trimming during that time. Once it stopped raining all hell broke loose, with the 1st job was getting grass seeds planted into the wheat stubbles. The land is ripped using a Sumo Trio, them cultivated with the Bednar seedbed cultivator and then drilled with a Kverneland tine drill.

This is the seed mixture from Sinclair McGill. It was sown at 14 kg per acre and will be in the ground for the next two years and used as part of our multi cut system.

Next on the list of jobs in September was maize harvesting, with just over 300 acres to cut, it was 4 days of intensive work, from the 25th to the 28th. The farm does trial work for Pioneer maize company, so always useful data that’s comes that. We’ve been working with and doing the trial work for the last 30 years. So we have built a very close relationship with them now.

According to the data from the forager we cut 5400 tons of maize at 36% dry matter. Yield was roughly 17 to 18 ton per acre, fresh weight, so really not bad at all.

We use a contractor to cut the maize but we do put a tractor and trailer on ourselves plus a tractor rolling the clamp. All the maize went into a new clamp, the plan is to have 3 clamps, all roofed, expensive to do but it solves multiple problems, the environmental agency for one. They will have zero reason to complain about water run of from silage pits once it’s all roofed. Second it will deliver a consistent dry matter of the feed. Which is important in delivering the cow ration.

We have been exceptionally lucky with the weather in Cornwall this year. Just enough rain when needed to get good yields and quality. But I do feel for farmers across this country that just didn’t see any significant rain fall. If this year wasn’t tough enough with the political drama’s, then a poor growing season on top as well.

Until next month’s update I hope everyone stays fit and well.