For a more regular update about things on farm and within our family, visit our blog:

www.craiglands.blogspot.com


July 2010

We are almost all the way through calving now with (XX)  heifer calves on the ground.  Joining will begin in a couple of weeks time, so plans are already being made as to what the sire team will look like for this year.

Mark has been spreading super around the place in preparation for spring and silage season.

June 2010

Whilst not a farming activity, Mark and Sam welcomed their 3rd baby into the world on the 7th June.  Isabella Mary Simpson Billing arrived weighing 7lb 7oz at 1.15pm. 

Due to Sam being heavily pregnant throughout May and early June, we were unable to host some vet students again this year, and were unable to participate in this year's National Farm Day.

January 2010

The year has not started out to be as hot as we imagined.  Milk production is therefore not affected.

Mark and Sam have both been involved with Future Farming' - a program DPI is targetting resources towards.  A film crew taped both of us on farm, for a television advertisement. We will probably end up on the cutting room floor!

Classification of our 2yos (1st calvers) occurred early in the month.  Of the 104 submitted, 61 (or nearly 59%) went VG (very good). 


September - December 2009

Gremlins have seemed to have gotten into this section and removed September - December '09.  During this time, we completed harvest which this year saw us put less fodder into pit silage and more into round bale silage.  This give us more flexibility with dry stock rations.

We also attended Colac and Noorat shows with Craiglands Luckystrike 3111 in November.  Whilst not doing overly well at Colac, she shone at Noorat, taking out the Supreme Udder class and then backing it up by being awarded Reserve Senior Champion Cow!

August 2009

Calving is just about finished, although the second round of calving will start again in October.  So far we have approximately 120 rearables and 7 bulls and with the second batch we hope that we will end up around the 140 mark.

The boys have been busy over the past few weeks spreading super around the place in readiness for spring and the upcoming silage season.  Whilst the weather has been quite cold recently, a few warm days have signalled the start of the end of winter and before we know it, we will be in the thick of harvest.

Earlier in the month, we sent 3 calves to Bellarine Secondary College for the Cows Create Careers program.  They spent 3 weeks being pampered and mollycoddled (so vastly different to here!), being weighed, measured and loved to death!  Mark went and picked the calves up on Friday (21/8) and he tells us that there were many a sad face and maybe a tear or two when he departed!  I am just finalising the registrations for his year's calves, so I will find out what names the kids called the calves and see if I can work them into their registrations somehow!

In September Mark will head to Camden NSW, to give a conference presentation on farm based feed management plans.  This is part of the Future Diry Symposium and for the past few weeks he has been fine tuning his paper.


June 2009

This month we welcome a group of Holstein Australia classifiers to our farm, who are using some of our cows as part of their training and development.  Of course, we have already met a few of them over the years when our cows have been up for classification, but there are a few new classifiers and I think this was an overall training thing for them anyway.  It was also lovely to meet Matt Shaffer who is CEO of Holstein Australia.  I almost didn't recognise him rugged up against the cold. 

We have booked in our big show cow (Craiglands Luckystrike 2843) for another couple of flush programs.  This year, we are going to flush her twice - early July and mid August - with the intention of freezing all embryos from the first flush and then implanting as many frozen and fresh embryos we can into recips straight after the second flush.  See the section on "calves" for an update on the ET calves that we ended up with from last year's flush program.

In early July, we will host 2 vet students from Melbourne Uni.

We have been road testing a computer programme for ADHIS (Selectabull) which consolidates breeding objectives and allows the operator to rank particular traits (both production and non production).  Based on the data that was inputted, a list is generated of a number of bulls that are the most likely to insert desired traits into the herd.  We have just been interviewed for an article in Australian Dairy Farmer which is promoting this programme.

May 2009

A full 12 months has gone since we started this page!  Again, calving is well underway with the shed almost full.  We have welcomed another city family into our business and home as part of the annual Farm Day initiative.  This year, the Azzopardi family spent a couple of days with us and funnily enough, they had a 4yo named Thomas as well.  Made for some confusing chastising at times!

Mark has spent a few days in a role as mentor for the Cows Create Careers program.  This is where school groups look after a number of calves for a period of time and at the end undertake a number of presentations.  There are prizes on offer to the individual groups of kids that do exceptionally well.  Mark is mentoring a group at Bellarine Secondary College in Geelong and another at Trinity College in Colac.

We have been interviewed for the "breeder profile" segment which will appear in an upcoming edition of the Holstein Australia magazine.  Keep your eye out for that one!

April 2009

This month sees us drying off groups of cows in preparation for calving which is to begin on 1st May.  In addition, a considerable amount of oversowing is happening with Mark and Trevor spending a bit of time on the tractors.

Our review of registered stock has arrived from HFAA, and on the books we have 495 registered cows and 8 registered bulls.  These figures may change slightly when dead and culled stock are taken into account.  But with an expected 130 calves plus a number of dams (and back pedigree) to be registered for this year's calving, we are looking to have around 600 cows registered with Holstein Australia.  This is getting very close to having our whole herd registered. 


January 2009

A very hot month for us this year.  In fact, a record breaking hot month.  As we near the end of January, we have experienced 9 days over 30 degrees and 4 of them were over 40 degrees!  This has seen a crash in our production, with the cows loosing 1000 litres in a 24 hour period during the days when it reach 46 degrees in the sun.

Just after Christmas, we were informed that our milk company (Fonterra), along with others, would be slashing milk price payments.  We lost 36% of our milk income and our payments now sit below the opening price (of July).  We are not alone in this, and like everyone else, this has hit us hard.  Especially considering the fact that we have entered an exceptionally hot dry period which has seen the end of our pasture growth and also puts stress on the cow's production.

The main duties on farm at the moment revolve around feeding.


November 2008

November is a busy time at Craiglands. Silage is still underway - albeit just the covering up of the stacks - and we are getting ready for the couple of shows that we attend.  Colac show is first up, followed by Noorat later in the month.

We also see an increase in the frequency of tour groups, with a Chinese delegation due mid November. 

Grass is starting to 'turn' and all eyes scan the sky for the increasingly elusive final rainfalls that signal the end of Spring and launch us into the hot Summer weather.  Hay is starting to arrival by the truckloads, but with the weather pattern showing increasing dry periods, this will not be stored in the sheds for long.

The spring classification tour arrived at our place this month, and we submitted 65 head; 47 1st lactation heifers and 18 2nd lactation cows.  Our highest scoring heifer was Craiglands Jordan 3175 who was classified GP84 and the highest classified cow was Craiglands Luckystrike 3105 with a VG86.  We were very pleased with the overall numbers too.  31 out of the 47 heifers scored Good Plus (up to 84) and 4 of the cows classified at VG.  The cow that we took to the Colac and Noorat shows - Craiglands Luckystrike 3111 - classified at VG85.

October 2008

Silage season has started and this year, we are looking to cut approximately 200 hectares.  The bulk of our silage is pit silage, although a small number of round bale silage are produced from paddocks that either start to mature earlier than when the contractors arrive, or from paddocks that are unsuitable for the choppers to work in.

May 2008

Calving time!!

Yes, it has begun again in earnest. We are at the very beginning of calving with about a dozen cows in so far. The calf shed is still to be completely setup but enough pens have been erected to get going.

This year, for the 3rd year in a row, we will again be participating in Farm Day. This is where a city family is matched to a country family and they come and spend either a day or a weekend on the farm seeing what farm life is really all about (not the sanitised or media versions that they are exposed to!). The two families that we have hosted have been great and were amazed by the scale of our operation and the amount of work that goes into running our business. We think that Farm Day is a fantastic opportunity to showcase the rural industries, especially in a time where most city people have little or no contact with farmers. Gone are the days where there was a family connection to a farm, We can't expect the city dwellers to empathise with us if they have no understanding of the issues we face. Anyway, Farm Day is to be run on May 24th and 25th and we should be getting our city family's details ASAP so we can start to communicate with them about what to bring and what to expect!