Another atmospheric sunset yesterday evening. Always nice to spend a few minutes enjoying the scenery after completing the chores asigned by our daughter.
Just watching the quiz 'only connect'. Its the one quiz that hurts my head. Other quizzes are ok in that I know the answer or I don't. With this thing, I struggle with the questions. Very tenuous or derived. Anyway, linking it with football, the Welsh sports reporter Tom Parry-Jones is the captain of one of the teams.
Worth watching Only Connect if only for the voluptuous ( a word not heard on our Not606 page before) and very intelligent Victoria Coren-Mitchell. How did David Mitchell pull her? And the programme is filmed in Cardiff. Enfys is the production company. I get very few questions right but watching and listening to Victoria makes it good!!!
Just loading the car up to head to stafford for a week of farm sitting. Mam in a local care home for the week. Its the same one she went to in the summer. Most of the staff recognised her and welcomed her back, which was nice. So, Daughter and partner off to Aintree for a horse show for 4 days. Theyre going up tomorrow afternoon, back on sunday night. Daughter showing one of her horses and grooming for a couple clients, so she'll be paid for being there. So its down to me and Mrs Remote to look after the animals. 59 calves on milk, another 16 weanlings, 90ish sheep, 3 collies, two cats, 3 horses and 2 fox hound pups. Hadnt bargained on the last two, but hardly a big increase. Their new kitchen started being installed yesterday. We're hoping it wont take long to finish or itll be the microwave, air fryer and pub to see us through.
The first evening. Daughters partner keeping an eye on me. Interpreting the hand held computer telling you who's drank how much is the fun bit. Sam the dog keeping an eye on things,
So, back after a week on the farm. Slept the sleep of the dead last night. Stepped on the scales this morning and 3lbs lighter than when I went. Ive told them to advertise farm labourer breaks on health club sites. They could get people to pay them to look after their animals. The farmhouse is in a great setting. Nearest neighbours are about 200 yards away. No light polution. You lie in bed at night, eyes open or closed its no different.
Just been reading the latest post from your daughter and boyfriend’s farm Remote. Who knew computers could tell how much the calves were eating and drinking. Fascinating. Oh to be 50 years younger. I would just love this life.
I had a tutorial on how to use it before we farm sat for the week. The cows have collars on with a transponder. When they go to the feed station it reads the collar. If its entitled to feed the system mixes milk powder and water and warms it on demand. If its had its allocation to that point they get nothing. While I was there, they were on two litre feeds three times a day with a minimum 1.5 hours between feeds. You could look on the hand held computer what was entitled to feed or look at individuals to see what theyd had. When you went in of a morning, there might be 30-40 of 49 entitled to feed. Id walk around them to get them up and go off doing other jobs. Come back an hour or so later and there might be half a dozen, everything else having fed. It was usually the same offenders. Id go and find them, walk them up to one of the two feed stations and theyd feed. Id do the same of an evening. Loads of detail on the computer. It had a couple days for each animal. One animal (no 20) wouldnt feed for a couple days though hasnt been on the naughty list before. It was panting a bit. Mrs Remote took its temperature, which was high. A couple jabs and within a day or two it was fine. Mightnt have noticed if I hasnt seen from the computer it hadnt been feeding. Fascinating stuff.
This is one of the screens. Feed station 1 had no 44 in it and it had 1.09l of 2 litres left to drink. Feed station 3 (dont know why it was 3 as there were only 2 feed stations) had no 16 in it and it had 0.85l of 2l left. there were a total of 35 entitled to feed. If you scrolled down to 'entitled' and pressed enter, it listed each animal entitled to feed. It would tell you what %age of its allowance it had drunk. Really useful. I think theryre going to do a reel of our visit.
The first couple days there were electricians on site and they kept tripping the system. Manual intervention needed. Also, on the Friday, the pipes froze. More manual intervention. I dont think the dogs could put bags of milk powder in the hopper either.
