Spring has finally begun to raise its head on Dairylink farms and ground conditions have improved over the past week. Even in areas where ground is still touch-and-go, the weather forecast is reasonably dry for the next few days and conditions should change quickly.The 2020 grazing season is ?under way on some programme farms. For example, James King has a group of 40 low-yielding cows at grass on his farm near Ballymena, Co Antrim, and Frank Goodman has his whole milking herd out in Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan.
Spring has finally begun to raise its head on Dairylink farms and ground conditions have improved over the past week. Even in areas where ground is still touch-and-go, the weather forecast is reasonably dry for the next few days and conditions should change quickly.
The 2020 grazing season is ?under way on some programme farms. For example, James King has a group of 40 low-yielding cows at grass on his farm near Ballymena, Co Antrim, and Frank Goodman has his whole milking herd out in Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan.
Programme participants are being encouraged to walk milking platforms to assess ground conditions and measure grass to get a handle on opening covers for the season.
A few farmers have no fertiliser spread and their priority is to get some on soon to help kickstart growth once temperatures start to rise.
Fodder supply is generally not an issue on farms that are still fully housed. Instead, slurry storage is the main problem for these farmers.
Where ground has dried out, heavy covers are limiting the ability to get slurry on to some fields.
Young stock can be useful here to graze down covers ahead of slurry, especially on out-farms.
Almost all dairy farmers will have some milking cows that could be turned out to graze covers near the farmyard, if ground conditions permit. Cows that are past peak lactation and settled in-calf should be identified for going to grass first. Early grazing helps develop a structure to the grass wedge (the graph that illustrates covers across the milking platform).
If ground conditions are mediocre, consider letting cows out for a few hours and bringing them in early in an on-off grazing routine. Back fencing is also a useful measure to prevent cows from walking over grazed ground.
Around three-quarters of the spring-calving group have calved down so far on Frank Goodman’s farm near Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan. There are 75 cows due to calve this spring, plus 18 cows already calved last autumn.
However, Frank has decided to move away from autumn-calving and no cows were served over the winter. Between culling older cows and delaying breeding among the rest, there will be no cows calving down on the Goodman farm this autumn and the whole herd will be in a spring-calving system from next spring.
Labour requirement is the main reason for the change, as the workload will become more seasonal and there will be a period of no milking at the end of the year. The small autumn-calving group wasn’t eligible for winter bonuses, so there was no extra financial incentive for sticking to the 80/20 spring/autumn calving split.
Ground conditions have continued to improve on the Goodman farm over the past week and the milking herd is at grass full time. Cows are averaging 28.4l at 4.29% butterfat and 3.25% protein from 8kg of concentrates. Frank changed parlour nuts this week to reduce the crude protein content from 21% to 16%.
Grazing
The first grazing of the 2020 season took place on 29 February. However, broken weather meant that cows had to be re-housed and on-off grazing was needed at various points in the first half of March.
Lime was spread across most of the farm at 2t/ac in late autumn. The first round of fertiliser went on the entire milking platform on 27 February.
It was the second time that Frank had used protected urea for the first round, and it was spread at 40 units per acre.
“There hasn’t been much growth so far, but the farm has greened up. Hopefully grass gets going from this week on, because ? it’s the first time this year that the forecast is looking good,” Frank said.
Some slurry was spread on silage ground at the start of February, which helped take pressure off storage.
“There were some heavy covers that needed to be grazed off before we could get slurry on. The contractor is due back on Saturday to spread more slurry with a ferry and umbilical system,” Frank added.
Heifers
Maiden heifers were turned out to grass on an out-farm on Monday, which has helped free up housing space. The shed will be cleaned out, power-washed and disinfected before some of the oldest heifer calves will be moved over to it.
If the marts are still open for business next week, Frank plans to sell off some bull calves to free up space and reduce labour requirement in the calf shed.
He had some issues with cryptosporidium scour in young calves this spring. All newborn calves get treated with halocur daily for the first eight days. Frank has been maintaining a high level of hygiene in the calf shed and a broad-spectrum disinfectant that is effective against crypto is being used.
Ground conditions are improving across Dairylink Ireland farms.Some programme farmers have started the 2020 grazing season.Slurry storage is tight on many dairy farms across the country.Almost all dairy farmers have a group of cows that could be selected for turning out to grass once ground dries out. Read more
Grazing season finishing on Dairylink farms
Dairylink Ireland: Preparing for a busy spring in Monaghan
Dairylink: spring plans delayed on programme farms
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