Without fail, whooper swans alight on the lake beside us as the first frost of winter arrives, and if they could speak, I‘m pretty sure RTÉ would have them employed as weather forecasters.

Last week, no fewer than 20 flew over us on two crisp, cool mornings, bringing about that finality to summer. The sunny days were only codding us.

Phred the pheasant is still hanging around the farm, and these days he’s looking particularly splendid as he’s in full plumage.

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I’d better keep a close eye on him once November begins, however, as he’s liable to walk up to a hunter looking for his dinner and end up becoming dinner himself.

While we usually preserve the lands, I can’t yet speak pheasant to tell him which fields he can’t parade through over the next few months, but we’re hoping he’ll get through with a bit of luck. He does seem to hang around the shed most of the time, which bodes well for him seeing out another winter.

Another gorgeously crisp morning. I can’t even get to the second gang without them traipsing after me to see if anything better is on offer.

Herd test

Autumn brings, however, the dreaded herd test, and while we’ve now been running a clear herd since mandatory testing began in 1962, there’s always an underlying fear that TB will pop up.

Perhaps it’s good fencing, good management or simply good luck, but this year, as I walked through them, there wasn’t so much as a pimple to be seen on any neck.

I know we’re always told to ignore them until the vet comes for the final analysis, but show me a farmer who doesn’t take a look at the cows’ necks and I’ll show you a white blackbird.

Selling

At least we’re not going through contiguous testing like last year. I don’t know if ourselves or the cows were more fed up with testing every three months.

With that over with, we can now start thinking of selling in the next couple of weeks, especially as the weather has turned wet in the last week. As it happens, we’ve only bull calves to sell, so we will ship them all off on the one day and have it over and done with for the year. The vet also gave the weanlings their pneumonia vaccine on the day they came off test, so that was another job ticked off the to-do list.

That extra pair of hands around also made the task much easier than it has been in previous years. Our breeding, however, has not gone to plan. Two cows, which were proven in-calf via milk testing, unexpectedly showed heat. While I’d normally assume we’d just missed a repeat, the January-born bull would have picked them up for us.

While it’s unlucky for them, with cries of a fodder shortage looming, perhaps it’ll work out for the best for us. Both cows are on the older side and have faults that would normally lead to an immediate culling, but between one thing and another, they’ve somehow managed to stay on.

I’ll be sorry to see the back of the first old lady as she’s the herd matriarch and is a great cow to follow a bucket and bring the rest with her.

Salers

The second cow is our last Salers, and we won’t mind her heading off as she’s caused us more hassle over the years than most of the other cows put together.

So with the upcoming demise of those two animals, we decided to keep all the heifers born this year as replacements, including the calf that broke her leg, though you’d never know it these days, to look at her racing around the field with the others.

Being off the Salers cow which is being moved on, I hope she takes after her sire instead of her willful mother.