I wonder which person looking for hay (or a decent bit of sunbathing) forgot to take the Child of Prague statue indoors last week.

Whilst I’m certainly not complaining as we were busy making hay, it’s been quite some time since I had to put the butter dish into the fridge in order to stop it turning into a yellow puddle on the kitchen counter or even had to retreat indoors where the stone walls on my cottage offered some respite.

At least it was a nice change to not have to worry about wellies or jackets for a while, though that was replaced with a need for sunscreen and a constant eye on drinkers as the cows were content with less grazing and looked for shade and water in the hotter parts of the day.

It took longer than expected for our last two cows to finally calve, and while we were tempted to leave them outdoors for calving, with the forecast hot weather we didn’t want to end up with overheated newborns.

The first to arrive was a sexed semen calf resulting in a red roan heifer, though she created a slight panic on arrival as the afterbirth was showing along with the calf. We lost no time in getting her out and she was up on her feet in 20 minutes trying to latch on, though she constantly dropped the teat.

As the cow was quiet I went into the pen to investigate and was surprised to find I couldn’t get a single teat opened. It’s only something I’ve seen once before many years ago, and back then we didn’t manage to solve it, leading to the cow getting culled early. But God loves a trier, so it was into the crush with her and after 15 minutes of massaging with warm water and some perseverance, all four quarters were opened.

The second cow was determined to try and confuse us all and carried over 300 days which meant I was counting dates and trying to figure out if she repeated while we still had a young bull around the farm.

Herd test

With our herd test looming I was beginning to think the vet would have two jobs on hand when they arrived on Monday morning but thankfully a bull calf was duly delivered the evening before.

These last two ladies are stalwarts around the farm, and can be relied on for their docility, so two litres of colostrum was taken for the freezer, provided another storm doesn’t knock our power out before it’s needed.

The stock outdoors were certainly not happy being taken out of their sunny fields for our second contiguous test of the year, although they were tricked quite easily into being penned for the first day of testing.

I did have to laugh at two older calves and a couple of the cows as the first thing on their minds was to go straight to the DeLaval brush and make up for lost time pampering themselves.

Reading day required much more wily tactics to tempt them in, especially after our Salers lady took off with a few calves in tow as soon as she reached the shed door and realised what was going on.

After many years working with her, we’ve learned there’s no point in trying to coax or drive her, so the others were penned and the shed door left open in the hope she decided that joining the rest of the herd was the sensible thing to do.

Thankfully her calf was indoors and maternal instinct won out in the end as she ran in, though she probably had ideas of staging a great escape with half the herd.

But at least the test was clear and now we only have to hope she has a short memory for next time or perhaps the calves can teach her that the beef brush is a satisfactory reward for co-operation.