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January-19-07 - December 2006

Water, water everywhere………I seem to recall moaning about the weather in my last article, but still it goes on. The Dee has burst it’s banks a couple of times in the last week and, coupled with the strong winds, a few trees have been blown down together with damage to our farmhouse in Caernarfon. The land is now saturated and difficult to move with any sort of vehicle across the fields. Still it is better to have this bad weather now, in the hope that when the majority of us start lambing, that the weather will be more favourable.

We recently attended an open day on Alternative Energy at Coleg Meirion – Dwyfor in Glynllifon which was well attended with several speakers giving us an insight into alternative energy production such as sort rotation coppice willow, miscanthus, solar and hydro energy. I think it is something that we all need to look carefully and quickly, in order to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and to reduce carbon emissions which is something that is coming more to the fore every day. Environment Minister, David Milliband stated at the recent Oxford Farming Conference in his address, which looked at the possible position of agriculture by the year 2020 that ‘the successful farming industry of 2020 will have lower resource use, notably in respect of nitrogen, pollute water, air and soil less, play a key role in reducing carbon intensity through energy crops, and will need to reduce methane emissions through genetics and diets’. All this would have seemed very far- fetched and ‘off the wall ‘ a few years ago but it is something that we need to consider carefully as an industry if we are to take this subject seriously and make a difference for generations to come.

With the recent abundance of water and wind here in Wales, surely it makes sense to try and harness it in the most efficient and cost effective ways possible.

Back to reality, and every day farming! We have just completed the scanning of all of our ewes and the results are very similar to other years with the exception that there are more barren ewes or rescans this year, which hopefully will turn out to be in lamb when they are scanned again in a few weeks time. One explanation could be that the ewes were in very good condition with the exceptional grass growth during the autumn period and were later going to the rams as a result.

Our Bison herd have settled in very well here and are no trouble at all, but the other day we had to call out the Vet as one of the cows looked a bit off colour. Our first attempt to get them in failed miserably, but once we had them in the cattle handling yards we managed to get them all through the cattle crush with no problems at all. The cow was treated for pneumonia and, to date seems to be responding to treatment. The thought of handling the bison seems to be worse than actually doing it, and it seems to get easier as we get used to their ways.

Written By: Gareth Jones

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