Murray Parsons, Student

Recently I have been working by myself doing early mornings as well as weekends starting about half 6 to half 7 before school each day just to help. I don’t mind though as I quite enjoy working with the cattle and sheep.

Right now, I have been helping with cattle, pigs and feeding the ewes that have been scanned for triplets due soon. I use a snacker which is a machine that sits in the back of the quad and drops the food as you drive along. Normally they would be fed only on the grass in the fields but at this time of year the grass isn’t as nutritious as it will be in the Summer so we give some sheep a small concentrate to give them more fat and energy ready for lambing.

Sometimes I work after school on a Friday when we finish early doing jobs that I maybe didn’t finish in the mornings or any other odd jobs around the farm like moving water pipes ready for the cattle to move into their new section of field.

One of my favourite parts of the job is seeing the cattle and sheep lined up excited for their feed in the mornings. The cattle enjoy having their new section of grass and the sheep enjoy having their snack in the morning. The sunrises each morning over the Forth have been incredible recently as well which always make working earlier easier.

A job that I did with my brother last week was taking apart the weighbridge. The scales are broken and we needed to disassemble it ready for the mechanic to come in and change the part. We’ve never had to do this before and it took a bit of elbow grease but didn’t take us too long. I know I sometimes get jobs that nobody else wants to do but I just accept it now and get on with it, it’s all experience and I am always learning.

We are due to start calving this week so I will be helping Cameron, our stockman, by tagging and bedding the cattle as well as moving the mobs to give Cameron some extra time to concentrate on the calving,

We will also start lambing at the end of February. I am looking forward to doing this as I get to work with more experienced members of staff and gain from their knowledge. We have about 1200 ewes in lamb this year, some are first time lambers which means we might have a higher percentage of single lambs born but we are still expecting a busy time lambing.