The 2019 grazing season has ended on most Dairylink Ireland programme farms, particularly in autumn calving herds. In the north and west, cows have been housed for several weeks, as ground conditions deteriorated and more freshly calved cows joined milking herds. Cows were housed full time on Stephen Wallace’s farm in Co Down last week, although Frank Goodman is still grazing by day in Co Monaghan.
The 2019 grazing season has ended on most Dairylink Ireland programme farms, particularly in autumn calving herds.
In the north and west, cows have been housed for several weeks, as ground conditions deteriorated and more freshly calved cows joined milking herds. Cows were housed full time on Stephen Wallace’s farm in Co Down last week, although Frank Goodman is still grazing by day in Co Monaghan.
Despite most programme farmers aiming to keep stale cows out until the end of October, early housing hasn’t created too much difficulty, as silage pits are well stocked for the winter period.
However, early housing and wet ground conditions did put pressure on some Dairylink participants spreading slurry ahead of the closed period. In the end, all programme farmers managed to get tanks down to a level that will see them through to spring.
A grass walk has been carried out on Dairylink farms that have cows in full time, to get a measurement for average farm closing cover.
The use of back fencing on the Goodman farm has helped minimise poaching when cows are at grass.
Exact target covers for individual farms depends on stocking rate and land type, but most programme farms are aiming for a closing cover of 650kgDM/ha (available). The last grass walks of the season suggest that participants are close to the target, which should allow them to have adequate covers to turn cows out to once ground conditions allow in the spring.
On farms where covers are above target and cows are housed, another option could be to graze off covers with young stock if ground conditions are suitable.
However, for autumn calving herds, it is worth remembering that maiden heifers should be housed in the next few weeks to allow them time to settle ahead of breeding at the end of November or beginning of December.
Cows were housed by night on Frank Goodman’s farm near Carrickmacross for the first time on Sunday. There is plenty of grass on the milking platform, although ground conditions remain tricky in places.
Frank is aiming to keep cows at grass during the day until at least the end of the month and average farm cover stood at 1,100 kgDM/ha (available) during grass walk on Tuesday.
The deterioration in weather conditions has provided challenges over the last few weeks. However, Frank is confident that he can continue to graze cows by selecting the driest fields for grazing and temporarily housing cows if conditions worsen.
This has happened already, as the wet conditions experienced during the first weekend in October meant that cows had to be housed full time for two days.
Implementing measures such as using multiple entry points to paddocks and back fencing will allow him to keep grazed grass in the diet for longer and minimise the possibility of poaching when cows are at grass.
Feed
Spring calving cows are being fed concentrates at 3kg/head/day and autumn calvers are on 7kg/head/day. The crude protein (CP) content of the concentrate has been raised from 14% to 16% to allow for changes in grass quality.
At night, all milking cows are initially getting second cut grass silage, at a fresh weight feed rate of around 38kg DM/cow/day. Dairylink adviser Aidan Cushnahan suggests that this will have to be reduced to incentivise greater intakes of grass during the day.
Autumn-born calves are getting fed milk replacer twice a day at 900g/calf/day.
In the autumn calving group, five cows have calved down and another five are due shortly. Dry cows currently receive grass silage, 0.5kg/cow/day of soya, 0.5kg/cow/day of concentrates and 200g/cow/day of dry cow minerals. There have been no transition cow disorders reported to date.
Frank recently decided to start feeding milk replacer to calves instead of whole milk. Before this, he had been feeding whole milk at 10l/calf/day. However, he is now offering 900g/calf/day of a milk replacer containing 23.5 % CP and 20 % oil over two feeds.
Initial observations are encouraging, as Frank believes that the calves are performing well on this new regime. Calves also receive a small amount of fresh concentrate daily for rumen development.
Reseed
Animals born last autumn and spring on the Goodman farm are grazing pasture, which was recently reseeded. Around 14ac of grassland was reseeded in August and another 16ac was reseeded earlier in the spring.
Frank uses minimum cultivation techniques for reseeding and the grass mixture sown this year contained the varieties Abergain, Drumbo, Dunluce and Abergreen.
Autumn-born calves are currently receiving no supplementation, while spring-born calves are being offered concentrates at 1kg/calf/day.
The forage maize crop on an out-farm has matured and Frank plans to harvest it this week, as the first signs of frost have recently appeared.
Read more
Signposts for Northern dairy breeding
Dairylink: better breeding increasing sales by €65,000
This is a subscriber-only article
SHARING OPTIONS: