Every three years we need to replace our bull, so that we don’t breed back into the same bloodlines. Last Wednesday Tim and I left George, the veterinary student in charge of lambing and went off in the landrover and trailer to Exeter to the South Devon Herd Book Society Spring Show and Sale. It’s four years since we bought Tregondale King Cole, our current bull, and we’ve used another bull, a ruby red Devon on his daughters for the last year and now we really must get a new bull. It’s not so easy though getting the bull you want at auction and the last two times we’ve tried to buy at the sale we have been outbid on what we wanted and had to buy later privately. The Show is a good place to see the best of the breed. It started at 9.30 and each class of bulls was paraded bytheir owners in the ring and judged while we checked their pedigree in the catalogue and marked down which we liked. Obviously size and conformation-a good well rounded behind- are important, as well as an attractive coat and head. Much of it is personal choice but the techical side-which now is referred to as EBV or estimated breeding value, records statisics such as calving ease, fertility, birthweight, growth at various ages and carcase information. It’s alot to take in! Then, having chosen a few we liked the look of there is the questionof bidding, do we bid early so if we don’t get one we have more chances, or do we hang on for the ones we liked the most and risk getting outbid and coming home with nothing? After the juding, which took till lunchtime when we’d seen so many bulls we were getting confused! We discussed our tatics and decided we’d miss the first few and wait for our favourite. Even though Timwas doing the bidding I was getting really nervous by now, and my heart was beating! The first went for reasonable prices and then no 14 came in and Tim got bidding. We’d decided that the right bull is so important for the future of the herd that we’d spend more than we’d done previously and as someone bid against us, the auctioneer kept going up in hundreds of guineas until finally the other person dropped out and the autioneer banged down his hammer and pointed at us! It was a great relief and although it was the top price paid up till then at the sale we knew we’d got what we wanted. Interestingly the prices went up after that and some of the other bulls we’d selected but not liked as much went for even more. A bull from the same herd as the one we bought made the top price of the day so we were pretty pleased and as Tim led him into the trailer, he said he heralds a new future! I’m sure he’ll give us cattle we’ll be proud of.

It’s amazing what happens in a week! Seven days ago the land was completely yellow and lifeless and now the warmer temperature and rain has got it moving. Spring- what a perfect description! This year everything has been behind with a longer and harder winter than usual, but hopefully we are catching up now. As they say, ‘ a peck of dust in March is worth a king’s ransom’ and the dry weather has been ideal for getting the dung spread on the land and the spring barley planted at the optimum time.

The lambs are being born during the last week and we are probably about a third of the way through. Tim is getting a bit weary of all the early mornings but our lambing student has been helping me with the evening shifts. Most of the ewes and lambs are going well and need little assistance. When they lamb they go in a pen with their lambs to ‘mother up’ for a day and we check the ewe has milk and they are feeding ok. Then we put them in a bigger barn for another day where we can keep a good eye on them before we take them out in small groups to the fields. We get a few ewes who for some reason don’t like one of their lambs and reject one which is very time consuming trying various methods and tricks to get them to accept the lamb. It’s understandable if there has been a mix up and a ewe has the wrong lamb, but when she doesn’t like her own lamb it tries the farmers’ patience and language! As a last resort the ‘orphan lamb’ gets bottle fed. The number of orphans is increasing as some ewes may not have enough milk for 2 or 3 lambs and they need feeding 4 times a day. George, our vet student assistant here on work experience is beginning to understand why Tim is keen to foster them to mothers with only a single lamb!

We’ve also had a couple of cows calve this week although the main herd is not due to start calving for another few weeks. This Wednesday is going to be pretty important as Tim and I will be going to the South Devon cattle sale in Exeter to buy a new bull. We need a new bull every three years so he does not serve his own daughters as they go into the herd. It’s an important decision as the bull obviously makes half the herd. We want one that produces good shapely calves with excellent growth rates but not so big that the cows have calving problems, so hopefully we’ll be getting a top bull who will be fit to serve our 40 cows during the summer. Talking of summer, Tim heard on the Farming Today programme on the radio this morning that a weather forcasting agency-not the met office –is predicting a summer like 1976!