The grazing season is almost over in Clara. We still have a few milking cows out grazing, but all of the young stock and dry cows are in their winter accommodation. The silage quality is excellent, at 35%DM and 70%DMD, so we will have to restrict intakes with some of the dry cows to prevent them from getting too fat.

These heavier cows will be kept on the outdoor cubicles at the start of the winter with silage intakes restricted through the diet feeder, but with unrestricted access to round bales of straw and dry cow minerals to keep them fit and healthy for calving.

The cows that are still milking are in excellent condition and will get enough of a dry period if dried off at Christmas. We still have 15% of quota left for spring and this should be enough with calving starting here on 20 January.

This is the second last dry period with the headache of quota management and apart from the opportunity to expand this will be a welcome relief after 2015.

We are also trying to finish some cull cows at the moment. We hope to have most of them gone by the start of the calving season.

As usual these cows were the lightest in the herd at drying off as they have been milking well at the end of lactation. We are feeding them 4kg of meal and a 50/50 mix of grass and wholecrop silage.

Most will be sold to the factory, but some might be sold through the mart for further feeding. We will offload as many as possible before the end of January to free up time and space for calving and the start of the next milking season.

We have 70 in-calf heifers to enter the herd this year that came into the cubicle shed this week. We decided to put them on the indoor cubicles with some of the lighter and younger cows for the start of the winter.

We have automatic scrapers in the shed which makes it easier to train the heifers to lie up in the cubicles. We will probably invest in automatic scrapers for them in the future.

We will group cows based on their calving date when they are a week or so from calving and give them their final dose for fluke, to ensure that every animal enters the milking herd healthy. The dry cows will also get a pre-calving IBR vaccination and a worm dose before Christmas.

There’s not as many cows going through the milking parlour, but it’s still a busy time of year. The calving box and calf pens need some attention over the next month.

Off farm news

There was a welcome development off farm this week with the approval of Glanbia Ingredients Ireland’s acquisition of Wexford Creamery by WMP shareholders.

The Wexford addition is a good move for the company as it strengthens Glanbia’s foothold in the south-east of the country as well as delivering extra processing capacity for the company.

It should be a great move for Wexford milk suppliers too, who will now be paid the same as all other GII suppliers and they keep ownership, management and maintenance of their milk processing facilities in Irish farmers hands, rather than letting some foreign entity control their destiny.