Breeding
As we approach late-July, the time for breeding cows is coming to the end. Any cow served now won’t calve until the end of April, and with long gestation length bulls that could be early May.
These late calving cows are problematic because they eat too much silage, don’t produce enough milk, are more likely to have problems and are very hard to get back in calf.
The differential in price between a cull cow and an in-calf heifer is much lower now than it was, so the replacement cost is less. OK, the cost of rearing heifers has increased, but the purchase price of an in-calf heifer has decreased.
This means the margin for those rearing them to sell has been greatly reduced.
Meanwhile, cull cows are a good trade. I think accepting a slightly higher empty rate in order to have a more compact calving season is a good trade-off.
With silage stocks scarce, most farmers are looking at every cow and asking if she is worth keeping. The earlier cows are culled the better in terms of building up grass and diverting more of this grass to silage.
Milking
It won’t be just farmers in Cork and Clare looking to take the Sunday evening milking off this weekend. With breeding finished, switching to 13 times milking per week is a no-brainer for most farmers, especially those that do most of the milking themselves.
Teagasc studies found no drop in performance when cows are on 13 times milking from mid-July onwards.
Other farmers are looking at milking three times in two days or 10 times in seven days, meaning there are four days when cows are milked once a day, including both Saturday and Sunday, and then three days when they are milked twice a day as normal.
The other option is to go once a day (OAD) milking for the rest of the season.
New Zealand research has found that cows drop in production by around 13% when on OAD for the second half of the lactation, and around 5% over the full lactation. Grass allocations and SCC need to be carefully managed.
For those on 13 times milking, cows should be given plenty of grass on Sunday morning and kept away from the yard or activity.
Some farmers use a batt-latch to give the cows more grass at the time they would normally be milking at.
SCC would need to be under 200,000 before embarking on a flexible milking routine, but not as important on 13 times milking. I think these flexible milking routines, such as OAD for early spring, twice a day for the peak and then 10 in seven or OAD for July onwards are going to be more common in the future.
Protected urea
There has been a lot of discussion in recent weeks around protected urea and how effective it has been this summer. Many farmers switched back to CAN-based fertilisers hoping for a better response.
I haven’t met anyone that has seen increased growth as a result of moving back to CAN, so my conclusion is it’s a weather/soil temperature problem as opposed to a nitrogen type problem that has led to the poor growth rates.
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