Archived News

3rd November 2013

It’s been a busy few weeks and the storm on Monday added to the work load, with trees down and the electricity off for almost 9 hours.  We managed to use a generator to run one of the calf milk machines here at Manor for a few hours; it was a bit stop-start and then packed up entirely. Although it wasn’t ideal that the calves couldn’t access their milk as normal, at least these older calves also had the choice of ‘hard grub’.

We were lent a generator by Autoagritech for the youngest calves which are at Raikes; these are fed entirely on milk in the first few weeks with an allocated quantity available to them every 24 hours, to drink as and when they like.

Having had miles of power lines put underground recently in the AONB and including our fields, it was ironic that the top of a Horse Chestnut tree snapped off near the farm yard and fell straight onto the power line where it comes out of the ground!

Cattle are gradually being moved in from the fields to over-winter in the barns as grass stops growing. Last week the groups from Broadmoor and Damphurst moved to Paddington, Tillingbourne and Elix Wood to Raikes and 50 cattle moved from Wotton House to Prince William where they will graze down the field for a week before also heading to the cattle shed at Raikes.

‘Fat cattle’ have been sorted and those reaching good conformation and weight have gone to the abattoir after two years on the farm.

We’ve had a couple of cases of acorn poisoning with one young steer becoming quite ill. Acorns contain gallotannin which breaks down into gallic acid and tannin acid in the rumen. The tannin acid causes ulcerations in the mouth and intestine, but the damage caused to the kidneys often causes kidney failure and death.

There isn’t any specific antidote and due to internal damage, any cattle that do survive generally don’t do well; hopefully ours will be an exception to that rule.

Contractors completed the maize harvest and the last of the silage has been clamped and sheeted at Raikes.