Another wet week, at last we are getting some rain. The weekend was the wettest time with 30mm of rain falling on Saturday, on through the night and into Sunday. The remainder of the 51. 5 mm total fell overnight on several of the remaining days ,accompanied by some strong winds. Apart from the beginning of the week the days have been quite pleasant, with plenty of sunshine and for October it has been quite mild, with late evening and early morning temperatures reaching highs of 16.8C.

With Halloween fast approaching Melissa, with help from another PC coach called Selina, organised a fun rally for Beaufort Pony Club members. Twenty children of various ages, were booked into the Halloween-themed rally. Two identical handy pony courses, including some jumps, were built and decorated with spooky things, such as spider's webs, spiders and ghosts. The children were then put into teams, balancing the ages, before the fun relays began. To add to the excitement the children and ponies were all in fancy dress. At the very end everyone was given a googly-eyed sweet.

On Manor Farm we have just bought 100 Aberdeen Angus x calves. These are now in residence in a large barn bedded up with plenty of fresh straw, where they are quickly settling into their new surroundings . They were transported from Liskeard, Cornwall and were born on two farms in the area. We bring them onto our farm once they have been weaned and no longer require milk in their diet, so they are about 12 weeks old and have become accustomed to a forage diet before being moved.

We have also had the stress of a TB test for the Anguses on the farm, which were bought in October 2021.The test comes around so quickly as the cattle now have to be tested every six months. Fortunately it was accomplished without any incidents , but testing the cattle is always a worrying time as handlers can easily be injured. We were very pleased when the injection sites were measured three days later that there were no failures. If any animal had failed we would have been shut down and not able to have brought our newly purchased Anguses onto the farm.

Whilst these older Anguses were brought in for testing it provided an opportunity to check their weights, just to make sure they were growing properly. They were also split into two groups, one made up of heifers, the other of steers (castrated bulls). This is to make managing them easier, as the heifers will finish and be ready for sale sooner than the steers, so instead of weighing them all next time, we will only have to sort through the heifer group. The two groups are now back in two fields, the steers in an outlying field of permanent pasture and the heifers in a field adjacent to the farm buildings. Both groups are being fed extra food as although the grass has grown recently it will not have enough nutrients to sustain the animals growth at this time of the year.

Kevin's flock of 480 ewes that will be giving birth to their lambs next March, were moved during the week, after which 14 rams were introduced. They have been moved onto a farm near Wootton Bassett, where some permanent pasture needs grazing before winter sets in. This meant that Kevin and Francis had to put up electric sheep fencing around the first two fields the day before. The following day trailers towed behind tractors were loaded and transported to the larger of the two fields by Kevin and Ian. Another trailer towed by the Land-rover was loaded with the rams selected to join the flock. It was Melissa who was chosen to drive them to join the ewes. Also moved were 50 of the 100 elite ewes, with Ross,t he ram recently purchased from the Ross-on-Wye sale. These were put into the smaller field. The other 50 elite ewes are remaining on Manor Farm with Ed, a ram purchased in the autumn of 2020.