Mucky Manor Pics

I know that its not ideal time of year for drainage but I wanted to get it done before Glas started because I believe that I cannot do drainage like this on permanent pasture when in Glas. It's ready for moleploughing in the summer - about 4ft apart and directly into the stone drains at a depth of about 12 inches. Job was done with a track machine and a stoning cart on a tra cked morooka. I am pleased with it as damage was minimal. It should go a long way towards my fight against rushes. It's on a drumlin, so the clay is boulder clay as opposed to daub. I was surprised - I though it would be all daub after 2 or 3 inches. It was very saturated clay - I could have gotten him to draw it away but that would have taken another morooka and a lot of extra money so I dot him to scatter the diggings out and pull the bucket on them. I will run over it with the land leveller or ring roller in late spring - I expect that grass will come up through it and it will be lost. Ground was very wet, a day of rain in summer would leave it that cattle poached it.

Bit of scraping and scratching to do to level off the diggings but another half day will tidy it all up. 700 meters per day on average he can lay.

It looks messy, but I'm confident that it will do a massive job on the bit of ground!

2050 meters. 20 loads of stone.

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Just wondering @muckymanor - how is the drainage fairing out with the rain you have had?

Well @muckymanor .
How did that ground go on for you since?

Did it improve usability ?
Did you lime/ reseed it ?
 
Well @muckymanor .
How did that ground go on for you since?

Did it improve usability ?
Did you lime/ reseed it ?
It really worked a treat. I'm able to get much more use out of it. Some parts of it that I didn't drain because I thought they were dry are now noticably wetter than what I drained. They are not actually wetter, but the drained ground is dryer. I didn't reseed - there's a good old grass crop in it that grows well and is well suited to this area and I didn't think that a new reseed would be as good. It did get lime however.
 
We are doing a bit of work on the old shed this last week to get her ready for her 23rd winter. We had a lot of gates with broken bars, broken barrier bars, rusted sheeting etc. We put down a pen of mats for cows and have another pen to lay this week before we move cows into it. We regret not galvanising this shed but it was built without a grant and funds were tight enough at the time.
 

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Still have most of my cows out at home and hopefully will get another week out of it. A bit of ground that I rent had scrub cleared off it last year. There's some great dry banks in it and they have dry lying in several places. It will have saved me a month of slurry storage. And hopefully come into better ground for grazing next year. IMG_20201023_075046.jpg
 
Last day at grass for these weanlings.

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Worked on having better quality silage this year. They are getting 2kg of meal per day which will probably be upped in the new year. Hoping to start slaughtering the first of this bunch in 120 days.

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The bin was one of my better buys. Tams left it a lot cheaper but it also leaves me able to source feed a bit cheaper. (Same nut is €283 per ton collected from the merchant but I got 5 ton blown in for €260 per ton. Also, when llke me, you have to drive 1.5 hours to the farm, the last thing you need is a 2 hour round trip to the merchant on the tractor for to collect a half ton of meal every 3 weeks.

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Last day at grass for these weanlings.

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Worked on having better quality silage this year. They are getting 2kg of meal per day which will probably be upped in the new year. Hoping to start slaughtering the first of this bunch in 120 days.

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The bin was one of my better buys. Tams left it a lot cheaper but it also leaves me able to source feed a bit cheaper. (Same nut is €283 per ton collected from the merchant but I got 5 ton blown in for €260 per ton. Also, when llke me, you have to drive 1.5 hours to the farm, the last thing you need is a 2 hour round trip to the merchant on the tractor for to collect a half ton of meal every 3 weeks.

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I have the same meal bin, I brought it second hand about fifteen years ago. What make is and where are they made? They seem to be very well made. There’s no name or anything on mine and I often wondered where it was made.
 
I have the same meal bin, I brought it second hand about fifteen years ago. What make is and where are they made? They seem to be very well made. There’s no name or anything on mine and I often wondered where it was made.
Mine was bought from a lad called Paul Cooney in lavey in Cavan. I had priced a few lads for the same bin and he just about beat them on price, but he was also very easy to deal with. He brought bus to his yard to see his own bin in use. He gave great advice on the base, and he delivered it right on time.

It has to be a generic bin - I think they come in a container from China and are just assembled by different sellers. I have seen some that are branded Cumberland and then PE Services sell the same bin under their brand. There's a good few of them around the country under different brands.

We looked at several bins but for what we are doing, we couldn't justify the bells and whistles in the extra cost. But its a well made bin and we like it.
 
We have started to work more on performance measuring. We weighed everything for beep on October 27th and again as we dosed on December 31st. 3/4 of the weanlings have done 1kg per day or better over that period and some even did 80kg. We are very happy with it considering that calves were weaned just before the first weighing. We have worked hard on producing better silage. Weanlings get bales that were tested at 74dmd and they get 2kg to 3 kg each of a 15% nut once per day. We are trying to keep inputs as low as possible to try to keep some margin in it and we are fairly happy with how its going so far. We will be weighing in another week or 2 and selling a few bit by bit after that. We have grouped the ones that we will keep on as stores for selling at 18 months or finishing away from the ones that we will sell as weanlings. He ones for selling soon are getting marginally more nuts per day.
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About 1/4 of our cows calve in autumn. A lot of people don't like autumn calvers. We calve all outside in autumn and have very few health problems when they are housed at 1 month old +. These lads were born in September.


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Got a couple of ringers in that second pic. Looking fit.
Second or first? Second pic are weanlings. All bar the big lad in the middle (he was born December 19 and 420kg at Christmas) were born after 1 march 2020. Doing a bit of an experiment with them - have fed them harder than any other year for the last 4 months. I have laid some target weights that I'm well on track for meeting. Hoping to slaughter some of this bunch at the back end of the year as opposed to selling off some of the lighter stock like I did other years. By feeding a bit more I hope I will be able to finish stock faster and ultimately keep more throughout the year.

First pic are a pen of lmx bullocks that will be slaughtered before summer.
 
Second or first? Second pic are weanlings. All bar the big lad in the middle (he was born December 19 and 420kg at Christmas) were born after 1 march 2020. Doing a bit of an experiment with them - have fed them harder than any other year for the last 4 months. I have laid some target weights that I'm well on track for meeting. Hoping to slaughter some of this bunch at the back end of the year as opposed to selling off some of the lighter stock like I did other years. By feeding a bit more I hope I will be able to finish stock faster and ultimately keep more throughout the year.

First pic are a pen of lmx bullocks that will be slaughtered before summer.
Second pic, one in the middle as you say and the one second from the left looks an odd one out but might be same size as the ones to the right but looks big because he"s stood next to some smaller ones.
 
Busy night last night and again today with calvings. Just in the door from bringing the bigger of this set of twins. Noticing that calves are coming a bit smaller on average this year - that's not a bad thing as it makes calving less complicated. 6 calves on the ground since 1am and possibly another one before night. It was a busy few days for the bulls back when.


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