Over the past four weeks we have been welcoming new calves to the Rock Farm. We have now finished calving and have 18 beautiful little calves on the ground. Sadly one died during calving and one cow wasn’t in calf, bringing our calving percentage to 90% from our 20 head. The calves are simply the most delightful creatures, and one of our favourite pastimes is to just sit quietly in the paddock and let them pluck up the courage to sneak up on us.

This is a great outcome, but it has come at the price of a valuable lesson.

You may recall four years ago, we rescued one calf from almost certain death (see here). Somehow Mum (called Bomb) and the new calf Daisy both survived. Daisy has since gone on to became a favourite part of the Rock Farm. However Daisy also had her own challenges when it came to her first calf, Buttercup (see part 1 and part 2 here).

Buttercup has also become a favourite on the Rock Farm – earning her place with gentle nuzzles looking for apples. She is a lovely quiet cow, but sadly she is the one who lost her first calf this spring.

All this means that we have learnt a harsh reality of running livestock. Sometimes we have to be ruthless in our decision making, especially when it comes to breeding. So this year the family have agreed that we will cull this line of cattle from our herd – something I should have done right at the start.

The hard part now is working on the logistics and timing when we will sell them. The market is looking grim, with a combination of factors seeing a crash in prices at the sale yards. An oversupply and the forecast dry spring and summer have seen prices plummet to between a quarter and a third of what they were 12 months ago, and sheep prices are even worse. At least our spring started relatively well, and our cattle still have feed ahead of them, but I feel conditions are about to dry out quickly.

At the end of the last drought, we were down to 10 breeding cows, and had weaned our calves early. This year we have 20 cows with two maiden heifers ready to join. With our new calves, we have 40 head in total on the Rock Farm. I haven’t made a final decision yet on our numbers, but we will start to reduce numbers soon.

We have been down this path before – a quick look back at our photos from 2019 reminds me how dry it was at the end of three years of very little rain. As we head into this summer, our cattle are in excellent condition, and our hay shed is well stocked. There is still moisture in the soil, but it is fast disappearing and the grass is starting to shoot to seed. If we are fortunate, with a few summer thunderstorms, we may just have enough feed to get through until autumn. Time will tell.

In the meantime, we are enjoying the warm weather… and our beautiful calves 🙂