Lameness: The autumn period is where we see the highest incidence of lameness on dairy farms as cows have a lot of walking done over the grazing season, ground and roadway conditions tend to become less favourable and with silage ground coming back into the milking platform cows are asked to walk longer distances.

Research suggests a cost of €300 per cow for each case of lameness. This factors in treatment, production losses and fertility or culling costs.

However, the extra workload they cause is probably more of an immediate concern. So, to stay a step ahead, now is a good time to do a mobility score on the cows in the herd.

This means picking out cows that may be slightly lame or that may need hoof trimming before it becomes a bigger problem. Thin cows go lame more easily.

Keeping cows in good BCS of 2.75+ will also help control lameness.

Potash: There are no restrictions on potassium (K) application rates or timings. Autumn is the best time to target low K indices.

Potassium (K) when spread in the spring can affect the uptake of magnesium from the ground and lead to higher risks of grass tetany and milk fever on farms. So try and target application in the autumn period when the silage is done and the risk of grass tetany is lower.

Every cut of silage taken during the year is also depleting the soil of nutrients and especially K. With most fields being cut for silage at some stage this year it is essential to put back the K taken off. Any paddock cut for bales should be getting 2000 gallons/acre of thick slurry which will more than replace the nutrients taken off.

Where slurry is unavailable, then one bag/acre 0-7-30 should be applied to replace P and K on silage ground. To raise index one soils you should look at applying 60kg/ha on top of maintenance for the year, which is the equivalent of a bag of muriate of potash (0-0-50) per acre.

Milk Yield : It is normal for yield to drop off as the year but a lot of farmers have been seeing a significant drop in yield in the last week or two and this could be down to the change in weather.

Grazing management needs to be adjusted for the weather conditions.

Forcing cows to graze out strong covers which have been walked into the ground will certainly have a negative effect on production.

Also this week the dry matter dry matter percentage of grass tested in Moorepark was 13%, which is quite low. This means the cow’s intake has to increase to get the same value from the feed and in general cow’s intake is less in wet weather.

It may be a good option to increase concentrate levels by a kilo during the wet weather to help maintain production, especially when grass DM% is so low.