Dairy management: milk quality, silage and grass courses

In this week's management courses, Aidan Brennan looks at silage quality, how to improve milk quality and grassland management courses

Aidan Brennan

27 November 2019

Dairy management: milk quality, silage and grass courses

Silage quality is important for milk yield.

Milk quality: Most of the milk processors start issuing penalties when lactose levels in the milk go below 4.3%. Low lactose reduces the processing quality of milk, hence the emphasis. Drying off the lowest-yielding cows or cows that have been milking the longest will lift the average lactose levels in the bulk tank. Feeding 2kg of meal to cows in late lactation will also help keep the levels up. Low lactose will become more of an issue over the coming month.

Milk quality: Most of the milk processors start issuing penalties when lactose levels in the milk go below 4.3%. Low lactose reduces the processing quality of milk, hence the emphasis.

Drying off the lowest-yielding cows or cows that have been milking the longest will lift the average lactose levels in the bulk tank. Feeding 2kg of meal to cows in late lactation will also help keep the levels up. Low lactose will become more of an issue over the coming month.

Sticking with milk quality, more farmers are reporting TBC and thermoduric problems since switching to chlorine-free detergents. You can’t switch from chlorine-based to chlorine-free detergents and expect the same results.

Extra-hot detergent washes, extra acid descale washes and using an extra product such as peracetic acid is going to be inevitable to maintain current standards.

The move to chlorine-free is to eliminate chlorate and TCM residues in butter and infant milk powder. The bulk tank will need to be washed with a chlorine-free detergent also. Caustic-based powders are OK for machine washing and should continue to give good results. More problems will be experienced with liquid detergents.

Silage: There’s a big difference in daily milk yield when cows are on good silage versus poorer silage. It could be a couple of litres of milk per day. Therefore, the temptation at this time of year is to continue to feed cows in late lactation only good-quality silage.

Don’t forget to keep some of this good silage for next spring. Many farmers know they’ll need one or 1.25 bales of good-quality silage per cow in the herd for wet days and nights in spring, or to stretch out grass in late March. Conversely, I was on an autumn-calving farm in Down during the week and the farmer wants to feed the best-quality silage now as cows are freshly calved and have a big energy requirement. Putting poor-quality forage into freshly calved cows is a disaster. It exacerbates energy deficits in early lactation which accelerates body condition loss, delays onset of heat and reduces yield and protein per cent.

Of course, the goal for farmers next spring is to feed as much grass as possible to freshly calved cows, but we live in the real world and some silage feeding will be inevitable. So make sure it’s good-quality silage when it is fed.

Grass course: Following on from the successful completion of the 2019 grassland management courses, bookings are now being taken for 2020 courses. There is a 10-day course for those looking to learn skills to better manage grass, and an advanced course for those who know how to measure but want to get to the next level of detailed budgeting/achieving high yields. Both of these courses are one day per month over the 10 months of the growing year. There will also be a shorter three-day course for those who may be working off farm and can’t commit to the 10-day course. For further details contact Stephen Connolly on 087 6696490 or sconnolly@farmersjournal.ie

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