Archived News

18th December 2009

A slight flurry of snow fell in the south east last night and it makes National news headlines! How crazy is that? The north has snow every winter and that’s barely mentioned.

The main work today is defrosting water troughs, feeding and littering up. 120 cattle were moved from Churchfield to Raikes yesterday so Dick and Ed will finish off some fencing at Raikes today.

We recently found that cattle weights were not increasing and therefore had the food mix analysed. The results showed that protein levels needed to be increased so we are adding 10% rape meal; the product remaining after oil is removed from oil seed rape.

Food mix for the larger cattle consists of: maize (above), cake (below),

rape meal, straw, calcium, vitamins and urea.  Cattle need rumen digestible protein (RDP) with microbes to break down bugs, this is provided in the urea and un-digestible protein (UDP), some of which is in the maize.

Donald loads and mixes the correct proportions of food into an eight tonne or four tonne feed wagon which is towed by tractor to cattle in fields and barns.  The smaller wagon is used where access is slightly restricted in barns at Churchfield. 

Modern technology measures the correct rations which are currently costing £53.24/metric tonne. Twelve tonne of food mix per day is fed to our larger cross bred cattle.