A calf for winter

Author and farmer Patrick Laurie has been forced to do calving a little differently. He has put his faith in his animals and is hoping for the best

Autumn, last year, found me in a state of nervousness. A series of minor misjudgements over a year prior to that had led to a situation in which a small number of my Galloway cows were out of sync with the rest of the herd. Some of them were away on other farms when the bull was about to be dropped and others were grazing on far-flung bits of moorland and it wasn’t going to be possible to fetch them back in before the bull had to move on elsewhere. A good bull is always in demand.

Few things go precisely according to plan in farming. It seems like the thrust of this job is an ability to respond effectively when it starts to go wrong, always keeping three or four potential conclusions in mind from the outset of every new project. If those are exhausted and you’re really in trouble, there also needs to be an escape hatch from which simply 'not losing lots of money' is a win. Perhaps I could have been tighter on these cows, but there was no single knockout moment of forehead-slapping idiocy which meant I was on the verge of skipping a year for six of my excellent ladies. Lots of little details worked up together, and I had been faced with a choice: postpone their ‘bulling’ for a year or let the bull go to work in December 2023 — I chose the latter option and plumped for my first 'autumn calving.'