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Our contract expires in August. Current standing charge 54p per day, night rate 13p and day 18p. Offer on the table for standing charge of £3.61 night @25p and day @32p from SSE. How does that compare with what others are offered lately and do we think the market is at the bottom yet?

The tank room here is rendered and needs painting so I’m just wondering what to use and any suppliers that anybody would recommend? Thinking light blue but suppose it’s not really important.

Has anyone else had low kill percentages with lambs this year? Put a batch of lambs in last week at 44kgs liveweight and they came back at just over 17kgs DW or 38% some hill lambs but plenty of continentals in there to. Graded well with all either 3Ls or 3hs so not as if they were lean. Buyer...

I spent yesterday afternoon updating our flock health plans with the vet and conducting our annual AB review as part of which we discussed the use of prophylactic ABs namely Orojet on the farm here, now over the past 5 years we’ve halved its use from all lambs to only doing lambs with a higher...

Treated a 1st lactation heifer for foul with betamoxLA yesterday and I’ve been wondering since how would an organic farmer treat foul? Is there a lesson to be learned from you guys.

Simple one really when are people giving their calves a second feed. As we’ve pushed towards modern best practise feeding 10% of bodyweight in the first 6 hours of life the second feed has turned into a right pain. 12 hours after their first feed they are often completely devoid of any kind of...

I’ve been getting some really poor cure rates with AB tubes here lately so I’m considering moving to all injectables for mastitis treatment. I have a relatively low infection rate it just seems when I do get one I struggle to get a cure. Vet says my AB usage will go up per treatment but I’m...

How far do we all think supply is currently ahead of demand as things stand today? Prices appear to be in free fall and one would assume production is increasing daily and will do for the next 6-8 weeks.... Is there even capacity in the cull system to handle a rush of cows coming through?

What’s people thoughts/experiences on using sexed semen in a block calving scenario? I dabbled in it after I first did my AI certificate and before I ran a block calving system but didn’t have a lot of joy. Conception rates were sub 30% if I recall correctly. Has anyone used sexed in cows...

I installed a foothbath last August and have used CZF in there initially once a week then when we were house 2x a week, It’s worked a treat to be fair and cow foot health is the best it’s ever been. Now the cows are fully turned out I was considering stopping as it’s getting on for £700 for a...

I’m busy sub dividing a block of land at the moment and as part of that I’ve got some new water troughs to go in. I’ve got a few of the round plastic type in already and I’ve got no issues with them however I do see a lot of big concrete ones around the countryside? What’s the pros and cons and...

So I’m finished with my bulls for now, I have 3, 2 have been running with the cows on alternate shifts and the 3rd is with the in calf heifers outside, he’s been there since November so they should all be well in calf. I’m thinking of taking the 2 from home there for the rest of winter to save...

Hi all, I’m looking at installing a rotating cow brush in the yard. We use tail paint for heat detection and was wondering does this make a brush a no go? I was hoping there’d be a vertical brush on the market but most seem to be horizontal or pendualum types. Does anyone have any experience...

Hi, wondering if anyone has any experience of these corn light bulbs? I could just replace our existing bulbs with these and hopefully improve the lighting without putting new fittings in, or what does everybody else do?

So I saw this #Farm24 thing and posted a pic of a cow and calf on twitter this morning, great idea but it shows the best and worst of social media, on one side lots of people retweeting the photo and the like, on the other side I've had a barrage of loaded questions and the like from all manner...

Hi, Our 2015 BPS statement has came through with a 50% deduction to greening payment on the "arable land" for a failure to comply with the 3 crop rule but as far as we were aware at the time we should be exempt from the 3 crop rule on the basis that we have more than 75% of our agricultural...