Ewes and Lambs in Sulgrave. Photo: Colin Wootton
Richard Fonge writes:
The drought continues with no end in sight. With harvest completed our local farmers have found, like the rest of the country, that yields and quality are down. This is especially true of the wheat. The lack of rain meant the grain didn’t swell and the crops died off instead of a gradual ripening. The oilseed rape was the one bright spot and yielded well, because it had good establiment last autumn and it flowers early and sets its pods in late April/May therefore the drought had less effect. Oilseed rape is a brassica and has a lengthy taproot.
When the various crops have been harvested, they leave a stubble of short stems. With the ground so hard and dry any cultivation for the next crop is not on, until the rains come. This will be a serious problem especially for oilseed rape growers as the seed needs to be planted by the end of August , to ensure good establishment by winter.
For spring born lambs mid July is weaning time. Hence the continued bleating for two or three days, the length of time it takes to forget each other. At this age they are no longer dependent on the ewes milk, which is drying up anyway. If you reunited ewe and lamb they would go their separate ways and not recognise one another.
As a nation we are now around 55% self sufficient in food. Therefore land use has to be carefully balanced between food production, wildlife conservation and energy use. In our parish there is just that, with our farmers, in keeping with most of their kind, producing food, but at the same time looking after nature with conservation grasses, field margins and woodlands.
Finally the use of AI intelligence is very much to the fore. However to an old dairy farmer like me, when I hear the term A I said, I think of artificial insemination, used by dairy farmers to impregnate their cows from the 1950’s. “ The Bull in the bowler hat”, was the term at the time!
Richard Fonge.