Dave Nicol, Tractorman

After a great weekend down in Edinburgh at the rugby, it was back to work on Monday. Hope we do as well at the next game !!

With the stockmen getting busy with the calving and the lambing starting at the end of February, in the morning, I have been feeding the cattle inside. All the Lincoln Red cattle that are inside are getting fed by a diet feeder containing a mix of last year’s organic straw and silage. At the moment, it takes approximately one hour to feed them but this will increase as the rest of the fat cattle come in. Also, the cows will be brought in for their calving period. We are rotating the weekend work so everyone gets a weekend on/off.

Around the estate, time has been spent Moling. This is burying water pipes underground, supplying water for cattle and sheep that are being mob grazed, on fields that have never been grazed. We should complete this task in the spring. It feels we have put in kilometres of piping in !!!

Last week, Angus Biofuels from Forfar, came to chip wood for the two Biomass boilers we have on the estate. This is the first time using this company. I was very impressed with the chipping machine they brought. Arriving around 10.30am, they were finished by 2 pm, after chipping approximately 300 tonnes of wood. (It took me all my time to keep up with him.) The wood was chipped into an old silage pit and I transferred it into two old cattle reeds that have been converted for this purpose.

The pic above is of the Diamont 2000 chipping machine which is made in Germany. The operator told me that it has a 700 horsepower engine. No wonder I struggled to keep up !!!

This January has been exceptionally dry. Hopefully, as it gets to the busier time for everyone, the weather won’t break down. We all know what early spring can be like. Here’s to a productive few months.