Wednesday December 11, 2013

Day 31..

So, we started off the day learning a little more about the pH requirements of soil and how to work out the amount of lime required for a number of different scenarios using the brack 2010 soil analysis results and a lime requirement chart. This chart referred to testing soils at 20cm as this is the average depth of rooting crops! pH is important for the farmer, ensuring the nutritional element is maintained. Plants need three key minerals; nitrogen, phosphate and potash and as the plants take up nitrogen as nitrates this results in the vegetative stage of plant growth, the phosphate helps develop and maintain the roots and the potash is required to produce the fruit (seed) so by carrying out routine pH tests deficient minerals are determined and can be added.

Our machinery tutorials turned in to the big fat Christmas quiz! With lots of questions covering this years lessons!!! High scoring winners received sweeties from the sweetie tin, and overall winners then choose two teams for a 'give us a clue' contest using photographs of different farming implements, actions and regulations! (We lost by half a point)!!!

This afternoon we returned to sharmens farm to carry out some more dis-budding on a new batch of calves. Horned cattle can cause major problems on a farm, with risks for herdsmen - as the horns can cause serious injuries and other livestock - calves often bully others and cause them harm so removing the horns has benefits for both humans and cattle. Preventing horn development is much better and easier to do the earlier it's done when calves are smaller and easier to handle and when they have smaller horn buds - that are easier to remove and less likely to grow back. We followed the same routine as last time, pushed the calf into a corner of the pen and injecting an anaesthetic in to the nerve above the eye and below the horn and waited about ten minutes before testing the horn area with a needle prick to ensure that the horn area was deadened. Once confirmed, we then used a hot iron to burn and destroy the horn-producing tissue around the horn bud and removing the bud itself before leaving the iron on for three seconds to seal around the area. Each calf is then sprayed with terramycin spray to prevent an infection from occurring!