Well it’s been a relatively quiet day today, no lambs born (we seem to be going through a quiet spell) and no excitement other than some ewes and lambs escaping from a farm where we have some grass-keeping. John, moss and Rocky managed to find them three fields away and brought them home again, despite Rocky feeling a little stiff in one leg where he got kicked by a cow yesterday. As sheep dogs go, Rocky has learnt a lot very quickly but he still hasn’t got the idea of how far a cow can kick, unlike the much older and wiser Moss. They both perform a fantastic service for us and we wouldn’t be without either of them – they’re the best dogs in the world!

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we’ll have to do tomorrow morning when we have to load up the cattle that John’s taking to our local cattle market in Melton Mowbray. As I mentioned yesterday, we have a lot of cattle to sell at the moment and it means a very early start for John and I, to get the cattle rounded up, sorted out and loaded into the trailer. We are currently selling what is known as store cattle. This means that they are not yet ready for slaughter and will be bought by someone who will fatten them up further; possibly someone with an intensive cattle rearing system. Our farm is pretty low intensity compared to most. Our cattle live mostly in the fields with plenty of space as opposed to being reared in large numbers in cattle sheds. Cattle usually enter the ‘fat market’ just before they reach 30 months old – this is an optimum sale time as they have grown as much as possible before they reach the critical cut off age of 30 months when the rules change about which areas of the food chain that they can enter.

Store cattle are usually sold by the price in pounds per animal but fat cattle are weighed and sold by the price in pounds per kilogram. This can work out at anywhere between 80 pence and 125 pence per kilo and an animal can weigh in excess of 650 kilos although you have to remember that this is what we call ‘live weight’. The price you pay at the farm shop or butchers (hopefully) or the supermarket is what we call ‘dead weight’ or ‘kill-out weight’. This means that the internal organs, hide, bones etc (basically the bits you wouldn’t want to buy) have been removed. Usually about 45% of an animal is usable. Therefore, typically a farmer would get about £650 for a 650Kg beast that he has raised for two and a half years. I’ll talk about the price of lamb another time but that gives you some idea of the mark up by the time you buy the meat prepared for cooking. It should also give you an idea of how many animals a farmer needs to keep, in order to earn a basic wage after he has paid for animal feed, fuel and all the other expenses of running a farm.

Hopefully we will get a good price for our cattle tomorrow; I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed! I guess I'm lucky that John is a pretty good farmer and knows how to raise good stock! See you soon,

Rachel.