Robotic milking.

Oh wouldn't I love to have a robotic milking machine. No more early mornings and I could knock off early every evening. Far away fields are greener I suppose but you have to admit these machines are incrideable. Lely make one called astronaut but recently I came accross one called the SAC Futureline. It's based on a robotic arm that's used in the auto industry. I love watching the video of it in action. I've included it below, as seen on youtube. This machine is made in Denmark and they also make a mobile version of it. If only I had about 180,000 euro, I have one in a snap. Oh well dream on I guess.

Bobcat.

On my own farm I have a Bobcat skid steer loader. This is basically a small machine that you sit into and it has a loader on the front of it. The wheels are driven hydraulically. You don't have a steering wheel, you have two levers instead and each lever operates the wheels on either side of the bobcat. This means that it's able to do an about turn on the spot (in its own shadow in other words). This means it's very maneuverable and can get into tight corners and sheds that you couldn't take a tractor into. It also means that, if your brave enough, you can perform lots of amazing stunts with it. If you look up the word "bobcat" at Youtube.com you can see loads of videos of people performing these stunts like the video I have here below. I can assure you I won't be preforming any of these stunts with my own bobcat and I wouldn't encourage anyone else to either but this is amazing to watch.

Youtube.

I love Youtube. I'm addicted to it. You can look up anything on it especially things related to farming etc. Just the other day I was reading about goat farming. I got curious and wanted to see what milking a goat would be like so I got onto Youtube and sure enough there's loads of videos about goat milking. Found this one in particular, it's a rotary parlour for goats. Take a look, it's cool.

Oh Dear!

Oh dear indeed. It seems British organic dairy farmers are turning their backs on organic production and reverting back to conventional production methods. Unfortunately the credit crunch and rising costs are to blame. This is a shame as I'm all in favour of organic production even though I don't run my own farm organically. However at the rate fertilizer is increasing in cost I may have to reconsider that soon. You can get the full story from the Independent newspapers website here. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/organic-food-becomes-latest-casualty-of-the--credit-crunch-884237.html

Welcome.

Hi. Thanks for visiting my blog. I started this blog cause I noticed a lack of farming related blogs on here and as a farmer myself I feel more people should be aware of whats going on in farming today. My name is Patrick and I run a farm in the south of Ireland. I milk cows and graze them outdoors for most of the year on pasture. You can see my cows coming in for milking in the youtube video below.