Seventy percent calved on Cork farm

When the Irish Farmers Journal visited the O’Donoghue farm at Ballinadee between Bandon and Kinsale in Cork on Monday morning, the cows had just been turned out to grass. Underfoot conditions were really tender after a nice shot of rain over the last week and John O’Donoghue was cursing the damage the cows did the day before.

Damage was done, despite the cows only being out for a few hours and it really highlights how easy it is to do damage at this time of year. Since the weather changed late last week, a lot of farmers have been in touch to say that cows are very unsettled while grazing and that was certainly the case with the O’Donoghue herd on Sunday.

“They went out at 12pm and brought them back in at 3pm but it was too late as the damage was done and I should have brought them in sooner. I think myself that they gave them too small an area so I increased it today [Monday],” John says.

The bigger area and drier conditions meant that far less damage was being done on Monday, but ground was still tacky and any more than three hours at grass would be too long.

The last few weeks have been hectic for John and the family. The Teagasc/Carbery monitor farmer had 70% calved on Monday, 18 days after the due date of 31 January although calving had started a few days prior to the due date. There are 171 cows due this spring, but John says he aims to milk about 165 for the year which is a stocking rate of 3.1 cows/ha on the 53ha milking platform.

Cows stay indoors in a small cubicle shed next to the milking parlour for the first few days after calving and only join the main herd on day five, when their milk can go into the tank. On Monday, John had 14% of the farm grazed even though cows have only been out by day, but with a lot of cows calved the demand is high.

They’re getting 5kg of an 18% protein high energy nut in the parlour and silage at night. John says the silage at night isn’t exactly ad lib as he wants them to be a bit hungry when going to grass in the morning. If ground conditions are tricky, he will let the cows stand in the yard or go back to the shed for a few hours with the self-locking barriers closed before going to the field.

He reckons they will be out by day and night at the end of February or early March, weather permitting. At that stage he will remove silage from the diet and reduce the crude protein content of the meal to 16%, but says he will probably leave it at 5kg until April.

Last year he fed 1.4t of meal per cow, which is about 200kg/cow more than normal. Included in this is meal fed to heifers in the parlour pre-calving. They get 2kg of a high mineral pre-calving nut each day after Christmas, which John says helps them to settle into the parlour. He also uses it as an opportunity to teat spray the heifers each day which helps to reduce the risk of mastitis.

John is a big fan of teat dipping the cows instead of teat spraying and with average SCC in the herd running at between 70,000 and 80,000 mastitis control is obviously working well.

So far, there has been no major animal health issues on the farm. The focus is very much on prevention, with each cow getting milked after calving and her calf fed colostrum. Freshly calved cows in second lactation and above get a high calcium bolus to prevent milk fever just after being milked for the first time. The milking parlour is next to the calving shed so its easy to run them in for milking and he doesn’t have to heat the colostrum.

Son Paddy is in second year placement with Clonakilty Agricultural College so is around to help one day a week and at the weekends. John also has help with calves four mornings per week. He says that fortunately the majority of cows have calved during the day so he hasn’t had to get up too many nights.

Part of this he credits with feeding silage in the evenings since before Christmas, with silage fed out at 3pm or 4pm in the afternoon. With the peak period of calving over, he expects that there will be about 130 calved by the end of February, with 40 due to calve in March.

So far there has been no fertiliser spread on the farm, with John saying that he missed the chance to spread when land was dry. His plan now is to apply around 35 units of 46% protected urea next week weather permitting and go again at the end of March. He got slurry out at a rate of 2,500 gallons/acre on land with low cover and 2,000 gallons/acre out on land that has been grazed so the pressure is off on slurry.

The main priorities over the coming weeks are to keep all stock as healthy as possible. While the last few weeks have been busy, John knows that the spring is far from over and there’s a good bit of work ahead.

Cows have calved down in excellent body condition score and are looking really healthy. While he can’t work out how many litres they are doing per day, the last milk test result came back at 4.72% fat and 3.73% protein. The previous protein test was at 3.83% which is high for an all black and white herd with no Jersey influence.

Keeping cows well fed at grass is top of John’s list. He bought some maize silage last autumn and will start feeding this at night, with some grass silage to keep energy levels up until cows can go to grass full-time.

On calves, John normally sells bull calves and beef calves at three to four weeks of age. He’s part of a dairy beef programme with Bandon Co-Op and ABP where he used high beef merit Angus AI bulls and these calves will be matched with dairy beef farmers looking for high Commercial Beef Value (CBV) calves.

Forty five sexed semen straws were used last year but John says he is going to use all sexed semen for dairy replacements this coming breeding season and use Angus on the rest. He thinks calf quality on the high dairy beef index sires is exceptionally good and they’re easy calving with no jack used so far this spring.

The herd EBI is €255 and last year the cows delivered 520kg MS/cow to Carbery. Empty rate last season was under 9% after 11 weeks of AI. There’s no stock bulls and heat detection is carried out by tail paint. John says it’s hard work but the results are good. Heifers are contract reared from weaning until the November of the following year.

Average farm cover was 1,050kg DM/ha in mid-January which is a bit lower than he would like, but he thinks he lost some cover over the winter after the frosts and snow. John says there are paddocks that had 1,300kg and 1,400kg on them a month ago that have 1,100kg to 1,200kg on them now. However, regrowth on the grazed sections is strong and as John is on track to have over 30% grazed in February, he should be OK for grass.

In Brief