Treway Farm Update

It is quite a long time since I have written a blog, I just don’t know where the time has gone!
I think now is a great time for a catch up on what is happening on the farm.
In a nutshell Will is in the trenches of winter cattle care which is certainly keeping him very busy. Although I think as the daffodils are starting to come out and the mornings are getting lighter there is an end in sight!
During the wet winter months we bring the majority of our cattle in to the warm cosy sheds at the farm.
We often get asked ‘What do they eat?’ Well the answer is simple, they munch through our homegrown silage and hay which we made back in the summer. Silage is grass which has been preserved through fermentation and retains more nutrition than hay. We make our silage from our herbal ley fields so the cattle are still eating a s’mores board of different plants which really benefits their health and wellbeing.
Hay is fed to our cows as they near to calving as we don’t want their calves to grow to large which can cause problems when it comes to calving.
The only other thing the cattle get is salt licks which makes sure they have access to sodium. Which is crucial for maintaining proper bodily functions and ensures optimum natural health.
Why not keep them outside? Well living in Cornwall it is very wet and if we left all the cattle outside the farm would turn into an almighty mud bath! This would destroy all the good work we have put in building up our topsoil through our rotational grazing practices. A mud bath would also mean that it would seriously stunt our grass growth for the spring and would mean we wouldn’t have enough grass to feed the herd through the spring/summer/autumn.
We do however keep some of them outside in certain fields which can cope with it or we are going to reseed in the spring. Currently we have our lovely young ladies out. This group is made up of our replacement ‘heifers’ who will join our breeding herd this season.
In other news the meat side of the business has been extremely busy and I am doing my absolute best to keep up! The support for our small family farm really blows us away.
The mini farmers ‘Charlie and Flora’ have been up to their usual capers. Charlie is truly tractor mad at the moment and is a great help to Will at the weekends.
Our next big ‘season’ will soon be here as the cows are due to start calving at the beginning of March. The farming calendar truly never stops!