This is a subscriber-only article
Now is the time to be thinking about what to do with cull cows.
Scanners are busy up and down the country with results ranging from an amazing 1% empty to over 20% empty after 12 weeks of breeding.
With high milk prices, some farmers are talking about hanging on to the culls for longer and milking them on, when in other years they would sell them early to reduce grass demand.
If keeping culls for longer this year they are effectively feeding these cows on an all supplement diet as the grass that would have been saved if they were sold will need to be replaced with bought-in feed.
Keep this in mind when doing budgets. The first step is to do a grass budget to see how much feed you have on the farm and then do a financial budget putting all the extra feed needed on the farm as a result of keeping the cull cows against the milk value of these cows.
SHARING OPTIONS: