First thing this morning we were able to breathe a sigh of relief as at last, we caught Parsley bulling. We last saw evidence of her being in season back on 7th July and since then, nothing! The weird thing about the 7th though was that it was only nine days after her previous season and as such, ONE of our observations had to be wrong. This essentially meant we had no idea when she was next due and yet despite careful watching twice if not three times a day every day since then, we were starting to get worried at our lack of evidence!! We now have all three cows AI-ed and hopefully pregnant. The success rates are NOT that high however and so the advice is to firstly check for signs of bulling and then if none are seen, get all three scanned around 32 days from now which is the earliest it can be done in order to be able to see the growing foetus. The next 'potential' bulling dates are therefore now in the diary, 24th for Sage, 30th for Thyme and 6th Sept for Parsley. Cycles are generally every three weeks but in reality that means anything from 18 to 24 days - these dates are day 18 but we will then need to keep checking every day from these dates for a good week. IF we see any signs of bulling then we need to get the AI man back BUT if we don't, it won't necessarily mean we have a pregnant cow, a) because we have already shown how easy it is to miss bulling and b) because sometimes after AI, if it doesn't take, the next cycle can be a very quiet one anyway... Hey ho!!
The photo is of a very shiny Parsley, taken last month – in the sunshine!!!