Drying off

Over the next few days hundreds of thousands of cows will be dried off across Ireland as the milking season comes to an end.

A superb autumn with good weather and good milk prices helped to lift the mood from a challenging enough year weatherwise. Now the challenge is to set the herd up to drive on next year.

That means controlling mastitis and drying off is a key step here. At this stage the cows for teat sealer only should be identified using milk recording data (no test over 50 – 100,000 SCC and no cases of mastitis during lactation).

Hygiene

The key is hygiene, whether they are getting sealer only or sealer plus antibiotic. Cotton wool soaked in methylated spirits is the best at cleaning and disinfecting dirty teats.

Rolls of cotton wool can be purchased through merchants or vets – pull it off in chunks and put it into a freezer bag and then add methylated spirits so it can soak in the bag.

It’s important to be able to see exactly what you’re doing, so a head-torch is a big help in this regard.

Clean the front teats furthest away first and then clean the back teats. Operate in reverse order when it comes to inserting the tubes, so start at the back teat nearest to the operator.

Finish each teat one at a time, so give an antibiotic tube and a teat sealer one after the other rather than inserting four antibiotic tubes and then going back to do four tubes of sealant.

This prevents teats from getting re-contaminated by getting in contact with the operator’s hands or sleeve. When the cow is done, spray with teat spray and let the cow stand in a yard for an hour or so before going back to a shed. Ideally, they would go to a bare paddock for a few days if the weather is suitable.

Soiled water

The closed period for spreading soiled water on liquid/winter milk farms started on 10 December, so between now and the end of December slurry spreaders should not be operating on land.

Soiled water can be spread from 1 January, but slurry cannot be spread until the closed period ends, which varies from region. For those in Zone A the closed period ends after 12 January, it is after 15 January for Zone B and after 31 January for those in Zone C and Northern Ireland.

One of the key learnings from the Teagasc work on slurry storage is that there is a lot of water getting into tanks and limiting capacity for slurry, so this might be something that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

Calves

This week we profiled two farmers who are preparing for spring. The key lesson for me is that they are well organised and have things planned out in terms of help and structure.

They are not leaving things to the last minute to get organised, but in the same way they are not making themselves busy now when they don’t need to be.

Instead, they are winding down milking and going into rest mode for the next four or five weeks before things start cranking up again in mid to late January.

Both are looking forward to the spring because they’re prepared for it.