THE week began with a wet rather chilly day. The rest of the time humidity has been high, with lots of sunshine, but clouds would sometimes arrive to drop occasional spells of light rain.

However the last day of the week was sunny and blustery.

Preparations for planting our autumn crops are well underway, using our cultivator in the fields of previously disturbed ground to break up the growth of weeds and volunteer cereals. Volunteers are what we call the plants growing from any grain that passed on to the ground with the straw from the back of the combine.

Ideally there should not be many of these cereal plants, as their growth will indicate grain lost at harvest.

Here on Manor Farm,the winter oilseed rape has been planted. It fits well into the crop rotation, usually following winter barley.

Oliseed rape is a Brassica, which produces pods containing small black seeds. The seeds are collected at harvest. The oil extracted from them is used for cooking, food processing, bio-diesel and the high protein meal remaining is used in animal feed.

Here and on Stowell Farm the hedge-cutters have been at work. In order to claim from The Basic Payment Scheme, farmers have to comply with cross compliance rules.

One of these rules sets out how we must treat our hedges. From March 1 until September 1 hedges cannot be trimmed, but coppicing and hedge- laying can be done from until April 30.

However roadside hedges can be trimmed at any time in the interest of safety.

During the last few weeks, Natasha and Annabel have been getting some practice leading their pet sheep Buttercup and Palini, so preparing for Chippenham Young Farmers Sheep Show. The judges travel to the individual farms because of the problems concerning animal movements.

They were booked to arrive at Stowell Farm on the Thursday evening, so Natasha and Annabel spent much of the day grooming their sheep, so that they were presented to the judges looking their very best.

The grooming process involved giving the sheep an all over wash, then rubbing some oil in the right places, including painting some on their hooves.When the judges arrived the girls had to lead their sheep on halters, before standing them correctly and answering a number of questions. Now they just have to wait for the results to be announced in a few weeks time.

Thursday was a busy day on Stowell Farm, as on Wednesday there was a call to say that the farm would be having an Animal Health and Welfare inspection the following day.

A DEFRA inspector, a trainee and a vet duly arrived. They checked individual animal identification,movements on and off the holding, also looked at all the animals on the farm to make sure they were in good condition, had water, food and that any animal needing treatment for an illness or injury was being appropriately looked after. I am please to say that the farm passed the inspection.

The other day, Maddie, one of our best cows gave birth to a Friesian/ Holstein heifer calf. This is good news, as hopefully she will inherit some of her mothers good traits. Maddie is nine years old and has given birth to six calves from the age of two years, three of which have been heifers.

Normally a cow would have a calf a year, but some high performance cows like Maddie may not become pregnant very easily, but will then continue giving an appreciable amount of milk over two years without having a calf. In her productive lifetime Maddie has produced an average annual milk yield of 13,219 litres, with 3.38 per cent fat, lower than the herd average of 4.1 per cent, 3.14 per cent protein and a somatic cell count of 141 ( the last figure gives an indication of udder health and should be below 250 ).

It is often the case that high yielding cows will give milk with a lower percentage of fat.