Over the last few weeks the Irish Farmers Journal has been in contact with a dairy farmer from the midlands who is in the midst of a crisis. While the root of the problem is cow performance, it has now spread to a financial crisis with his health now being affected too.

The midlands farmer, who wishes to remain anonymous, first contacted the Irish Farmers Journal after reading about a mystery cow illness affecting herds in Munster. After investigating further, it seems that the midlands case is different.

The purpose of this article is to raise awareness and see if anyone else has had a similar problem and if there are any solutions, before this farmer goes broke.

The farm

A herd of 70 cows has been milked on the farm since 2015. The farmer is well-experienced in dairying, having grown up on a dairy farm and started milking cows when he was a young boy. But the cows he has now have never milked to anything near their potential – and he firmly believes the problem is stemming from the grass and the ground.

Last year, the herd delivered just short of 360kg MS/cow, or 4,400 litres of milk/cow, from around 500kg of meal/cow. At the moment, the cows are milking less than 16l of milk/day from 4kg of 18% protein dairy-nuts.

Well-bred

The cows are all well-bred Holstein Friesians with an average EBI of €158. The farm is well laid-out and all pastures have been fully reseeded in the last 10 years. Soil fertility is excellent too, with almost all of the farm at index three and four for phosphorus and potassium, and over 6.5 for soil pH.

OK, the stocking rate on the milking block is a bit on the high side at 3.7 cows/ha, but the farm’s overall stocking rate is at less than one cow to the acre. It could also be argued that the EBI of the herd could be a bit higher, but it is still higher than average.

When the Irish Farmers Journal visited the farm last week, the cows were grazing covers of around 1,400kg/ha, and while the sward was stemmy, it was definitely no worse than anyone else’s grass.

In my view, neither the genetics nor the management can explain why the cows aren’t milking as well as they should be. Plus, there are more puzzling factors.

When the cows start calving in January, they are on a silage plus meal diet and are milking from the shed. When the cows went to grass in early March, they were averaging 26l/cow each day. After a week to 10 days at grass, the cows started to drop in milk production, going from 26l to 22l/cow a day.

Supplies

Looking at 2022 supplies, 38,000l was supplied in March, April and May last year, with 35,000 litres supplied in June and July. This corresponds to a very low – but persistent – peak of around 18l/cow each day in March, April and May.

Milk supplies in April 2023 were higher than normal at 45,000l, which corresponds to about 23l/cow each day, but production has since fallen back to 15l to 16l/cow a day.

In February, when the cows were indoors full-time on silage, the protein was 3.24% and the fat was 4.08% for the month. Protein is currently down at 3.06% and fat is at 4.02% – again, much lower than expected for the genetics of the herd and the grass quality on the farm.

The low protein is a real killer for milk price, as not only is the farm not producing as much milk as it should be, but the milk price received for every litre sold is below the base price.

Solution

The problem can be traced back to when the farmer got into dairying in 2015. Since then, the farmer has been trying everything to find a solution. Cows have been blood-tested for mineral deficiencies, for example, but with no major deficiency observed.

The farm is in a high-molybdenum area, which can cause copper to be locked up. He was giving copper boluses, injecting for copper and putting copper in with the water, but all to no avail. He was then advised to use Coseicure boluses, which contain copper, cobalt, selenium and iodine. He gave this bolus twice yearly for two years, but it has had no impact.

All cows are dosed for parasites six weeks after housing and faecal samples have regularly been sent away for analysis, but no significant worm or fluke burdens have been identified.

Health

The herd is vaccinated against IBR with a live vaccine and is vaccinated for leptospirosis also. The grass has been tested for minerals and very detailed soil samples were sent away to the UK for macro- and micro-nutrient analysis and all showed up as normal, or at least close to normal.

The farmer has been feeding all sorts of minerals to the cows since he started dairying and at the moment, he is sprinkling additional minerals twice a day on top of the meal in the milking parlour.

Stray electricity

There was an issue with stray electricity in the milking parlour, but this has since been rectified and rubber mats have been installed where the cows stand in the parlour.

One expert suggested that the milking parlour was too dark, so extra skylights were installed a few years ago.

Over the course of the year, meal feeding levels are relatively low at around 500kg/cow, but this has not always been the case.

The midlands farmer is adamant that meal has no impact on what the cows will produce. A few years ago, after carrying out a blood mineral analysis, he got the co-op to make up a ration that had all the minerals required, which had to be fed at 4kg to each cow/day.

After weeks at this feeding rate and with no improvement in milk production, he increased the ration up to 8kg/cow a day – to the point where cows were leaving meal behind them and almost getting sick, but still, no improvement in milk.

Ground

After all of the research and tests and results and after listening to all of the experts, the farmer is convinced that the problem is stemming from the ground. To prove this, he got grass from his farm zero-grazed to his neighbour’s farm and after 24 hours of grazing this grass, he says his neighbour’s cows dropped an average of 5l/cow/day. They recovered to normal levels 24 hours after being back to grazing their own grass.

He doesn’t rear any of his own replacements and so buys in-calf heifers. Before buying, he regularly milks cows on sellers’ farms and is satisfied with their yield before deciding to bring them home, only to see their yield crash after a few days of consuming his grass.

As recently as last week, he was bringing four cows 3km away to the outfarm in the cattle trailer to graze in between milkings. This trial lasted for five days and the four cows increased in milk production by 4l/cow a day during this period.

Having seen the cows last week, in my view, they look fine. Body condition score is lower than one would like, but the cows looked OK. The farmer says that he sometimes finds the cows are disturbed and unhappy-looking, and slow to come into the parlour. There is no adverse impact on cow fertility or animal health.

If anybody has an experience of something similar, they can contact the Irish Farmers Journal and we will pass it on to the farmer, in the hope that it will help to find a solution to his problems.

As things stand, the farm is heading into a financial crisis and the farmer is not sure how long he can stay farming at a loss. Please contact dairynews@farmersjournal.ie or text or WhatsApp to 086 836 64 65 or telephone 01 4199 505 to speak to someone.