There were four calved the last time I checked in with the lads in Greenfield farm, Kilkenny, but that can change very quickly at this time of the year.

Those calved are two heifers (calved before time) and two cows again slightly before time. About 20 in-calf heifers are back from the contract-rearers and are springing down nicely. Not many of the cows are softening down just yet.

One of the calves came backwards with the cleaning and didn’t survive. The cows continue to get dry cow minerals.

Some of the later-calving cows haven’t started to get dry cow minerals yet, but will start very soon so that they get six weeks of minerals in advance of calving.

Preparing

In the main, David and Niall have been touching up a few bits and pieces and preparing for calving. The space between the two calf sheds has been roofed – there was a gap of about 12ft between the two open facing sheds.

David decided that it was better to sheet it down to prevent the rain coming in at the front of the calf pens depending on what way the rain was falling.

Milk cheque

The cheque arrived for December milk. It came to €18,874 for 42,800 litres at 5.72% fat and 4.34% protein. It equates to about 3% of the annual supply.

The year before, they only supplied 14,400 litres in December. A penalty was applied for TBC and excess water and €282 was taken off the cheque. The last couple of readings had exceeded the parameters.

The SCC was very good at 156,000 cells/ml. In total, it brought the supply to 1.44m litres for the year delivered at 4.77% fat and 3.88% protein (128,000kg milk solids).