Lovely crop of Crown Prince Pumpkin enjoying the hot weather.
Every year there is a new challenge and June was no different. 35 degrees c was a challenge for everyone.
The cows are quite happy at 30’c, but 35’c is a bit much. Being a forest farm, the hedgerows have a number of trees particularly Oak, and the cows can find some shelter, but 170 cows need a lot of shelter! The milk flow goes down as grass dries up, and the cows are too hot and tired to go off and eat during the day so it’s a bit of a downward spiral. There are 500 oak trees within our 10km of hegerows so there is some shade out there.
We lost several days cheese production, because one of our chillers had gone down and it has taken over a week to replace it. Other chillers are working to their capacity and as we replace equipment we are upgrading to make sure there is some spare capacity, as this weather seems to be here to stay.
I remember 1976, and that was a lot dryer, no rain at all but not so hot. We had completely run out of food for the cows and father, and I had to drive as far as Blackpool to buy hay to feed our cows. We are in a better position this year fortunately, we did have 2.5 inches of rain 3 weeks ago and we have taken some good second cut silage.
