WE’VE been selling our calves at the auction mart where the trade seems to be generally good, but they are £20 less than this time last year, which isn’t good when the price of feed and straw has gone up such a lot.

Until the price of beef goes up though, there isn’t going to be a price increase.

We’ve also been selling some of our cast cows, which we send directly to slaughter because it saves time so suits us better.

And we’re on with putting portable cubicles in the Dutch barn for our stirks as they are just in big straw pens and this is costing a fortune in straw.

We’ve also just had our routine fertility visit which went well. We had quite an issue this summer with fertility and were struggling to get cows back in calf, but with a new nutrionist on board, who’s made a huge difference and things are looking up.

I went to the Cumbria YFC County AGM on Friday and would like to say well done to Steven Dixon for being a great county chairman.