COWMEN COMMENT FROM YORKSHIRE

摘要

David farms 183ha in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park with the help of his son Matthew. They run a 160-strong herd of pedigree Holstein Friesians, some of which are naturally polled. My comments in the July issue about not being able to guess the deadweight of cull cows brought a quick response from my local fieldsman, who offered to come and look at the next lot and tell me the deadweight they would be. He came and looked at them and I wrote down what he said. We were having a bit of a clearout and we ended up sending 11 cows and a bull. The next day, he rang me with the weights The first one he gave me was the bull, and he was within 1kg. I was just thinking how good he was, but the cows were a different kettle of fish. He did get one within 2kg, but the rest varied from nearly 10kg over his guess, to nearly 50kg under.