THE week began with a very wet and windy Saturday with 37mm of rain falling in 24 hours and by Tuesday the total had risen to 64mm ( just over 2.5ins).

On the Sunday I was at Roves Farm, where the flood plain alongside the River Cole looked more like a sea-scape, with sea gulls enjoying a leisurely swim. Monday, another wet day with storm force gales, was accompanied by a single flash of lightning and a distant rumble of thunder. Then as if by magic the temperature dropped to minus figures, with a sharp morning frost and thankfully a little more sunshine.

Recently we have wormed our 18 month old heifers to rid them of nematodes, such as stomach, gut and lung worms, arthropod parasites, such as lice, mites and ticks, and the trematode parasite liver fluke. All of these parasites can have a profound effect on the health of our cattle, so it is essential that we have a control programme which is overseen by our vet.

Our vet has been called on two occasions during the week. On the first visit he sedated our lame bull to have a close look at one of his back hooves. He was found to have white line disease, which is when foreign material penetrates and infects the this sensitive area. The hoof was treated and our bull is recovering well. The other veterinary visit was to look at a calving cow, which was not making much progress and looked very uncomfortable. She was found to have a twisted uterus, which the vet managed to turn, after which a live Aberdeen Angus heifer calf was born and her mother is now fine.

During the week we received some news from Chuggaton Farm, in Devon. Bethany, our granddaughter phoned to tell us that she was very excited as her pet cow, Pinky, was in- calf. You may not think this is breaking news but the fact is that Pinky has not been giving any milk for quite a while, having had her last calf well over a year ago. Bethany however had persuaded her father to keep Pinky and I believe this was her last chance.

Bethany was six when Pinky was born on July 17, 2007, (the first calf to be born that year ), also that her mother was one of the best cows in the herd. Pinky has had six lactations, not giving great yields of milk, but good butterfat and protein, 5.45 per cent and 4.41 per cent respectively. She will hopefully calve on August 26.

Later in the week Richard and Ian fitted a new back window in one of the tractors . The gale force winds had moved and damaged some roof sheets on the silage barn, so we had to call someone in to fit new ones. Hopefully there will be no damage to repair this week.

On Stowell Farm, Kevin has been mucking out and putting fresh straw in the barns housing all the ewes in readiness for lambing at the end of the month.

Mid-week our local NFU group organised a visit to the Mole Valley Farmers mill, in Calne. On arrival James Treble, head of agri operations, gave us a short presentation about the history of Mole Valley.

It was established in 1960 by a group of farmers concerned about the discriminatory practices of large supplier margins on key agriculture inputs. It is a farmer-owned business with outlets covering the country, with the latest being a feed mill in Scotland. It has had ten years of sustained growth.

Among other things it has nine retail branches, five feed mills, a fertiliser plant and 20 retail stores . I found the annual sales of the following items rather interesting – 92,000 pairs of wellies, 1,500 tonnes of food and 1,200 horse rugs.

Thank you to the staff, who made us all so welcome and for giving us an interesting guided tour of the mill, which I will tell you about next week.