Minerals: Cows will need a minimum of six weeks of dry cow mineral feeding before calving. With most spring calving herds starting to calve down at the end of January or early February, it means that dry cow feeding should commence very shortly. There are lots of products on the market and it gets confusing comparing all the different types. By right, the type of dry cow mineral required depends on the mineral analysis of the silage.

In the absence of this, most farmers will just buy an off the shelf mineral. The key ingredients are magnesium and phosphorus. Low inclusion rates of each will lead to cheaper minerals to buy, but you will have to feed more of them in order to get the required daily amount.

Standard feeding rates are 120g/cow/day, so compare different specs to this common feeding rate. The dry cow requires between 20g and 25g of magnesium per day before calving. If the label says there is 20% magnesium in the mineral mix and you are feeding 120g per day then the cows are getting 24g of magnesium per day.

The next big one is phosphorus. Not all minerals will have phosphorus included but most cows need around 4g/day before calving. Minerals with high phosphorus levels are generally more expensive. Trace elements such as copper, selenium and zinc are also important. For selenium, the target is for 5mg or 6mg per day pre-calving. If it says there is 50mg on the label and if 120g per day is fed then the cows will be consuming 6mg per day. Iodine is a tricky one. By right it should not be fed at more than 12mg/cow /day, but if the forage is very low in iodine then more will have to be supplemented in the minerals. Iodine deficiencies are common in some farms and result in slow calvings and weak calves.

Finance: The deadline for applications to the SBCI loan fund is looming fast as the main banks’ allocation under the scheme is running out. The interest rate in the SBCI fund is 4.5% for drawdowns less than €250,000 and 3.5% for drawdowns greater than this. The main advantage of this scheme though is that the money does not have to be secured against land or other assets. SBCI loans cannot be used to finance livestock, land purchase or land drainage but can be used for machinery and infrastructure. Milkflex loans are also available to most dairy farmers. Again, this loan can be drawn down without taking land as security. Milkflex has an interest rate of 4.18% currently. Repayments for the Milkflex loans come from the milk payments and these change depending on time of year and milk price.

COW: Farmers who are milk recording and have breeding and scanning data uploaded to Herdplus can use the Cows Own Worth (COW) index to identify the most profitable cows in the herd. The real use of the COW index is to identify the least profitable cows in the herd, or the cows that have the least potential for future profits. If there are surplus animals on the farm, it is these animals that should be considered for sale first.

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