Ian Pye works a 250 acre dairy farm near Preston which also grows crops for the autumn calving herd.
Old Holly is an open farm where the public can come and watch cows being milked, have a coffee in the tea room and buy an ice cream from the small farm shop. There's a strong focus on school visits. Ian is also a member of the NFU Next Generation Dairy Board.
It’s the time of year I have marked on the calendar and always look forward to - serving notice on our electricity supplier to quit so we can negotiate a new contract.
A free service to NFU members is offered by the NFU Energy Service at Stoneleigh - Peter Smith will probably never receive an OBE but for the money he saves farmers he certainly deserves one as he knows what is happening in the general market place, who is supplying what in your area at what price, and what to say to your suppliers and when.
The older heifers at Old Holly have become quite tiresome over the past couple of weeks – they are desperate to be outside again and even though they are warm, dry and have plenty of feed inside they bawl every time you walk past them.
Just like teenagers they think it ‘uncool’ that I look after them and they think they could do a better job looking after themselves outside – until the first heavy downpour of rain when I will guarantee that they will be stood behind the yard gate bawling and wanting to come back inside for me to feed them. The thing that annoys me most is that they upset the younger calves, as they think they should bawl too. The youngsters don’t know why; they just hear the older ones do it and think they should join in. It’s peer pressure amongst young cows and probably where the term bullying originated!?
Crops
Grass growth so far has been poor, but vetch and red clover crops have grown at a surprisingly healthy rate. We consider these crops to be slightly soft and given an excuse not to grow (like low temperatures) they usually take it. It’s a shame that they are fields reserved for silage, far from where the cows could walk to, but at least something is growing.
Winter sown triticale (cross between wheat and rye) is looking as sorry for itself as the grass fields. Before the heavy rains began we did manage to plough and sow the spring wheat into good seedbeds, and we are glad we pushed on and did as land is now too wet to work. Unfortunately it began lashing with rain as the final few rows were sown, not allowing us time to roll the seed firmly in. This has left seed open to attack from crows, which seem to be getting quite fat off our seed.
If we dig down the seed has begun to germinate, but it needs a lot of love and warmth from Mother Nature now to give it any chance of success. I’m hoping that it does warm up considerably as we need to plough and sow the sunflowers. I think the sunflower seeds might think I’m giving them as cold bath if I were to sow them now and they might never germinate.
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