Conditions inside cubicle sheds are making it difficult to manage cows, as cubicle beds are becoming very wet and damp. This allows bacteria to breed, resulting in mastitis issues on some farms.

In such conditions, increased vigilance during milking is important along with a good milking routine, which will allow the early detection of mastitis (see Focus Supplement this week). However, this must also be coupled with the correct antibiotic treatment to limit the impact on the herd.

While early detection and treatment is very important when combating mastitis, dealing with the source of the problem must be a top priority. In this case, we are talking about environmental bacteria primarily coming from damp and dirty cubicle beds.

For example, are the cubicles set up correctly? Is ventilation sufficient in the shed? Is slurry being managed effectively and scrapers running often enough?

Spending time assessing cubicles in terms of how cows are using them can be very productive and small changes in the brisket board or neck rail can make a significant improvement to cubicle hygiene.

Most of the project farms use hydrated lime mixed with sawdust on the cubicle beds, which dries them and goes some way towards killing bacteria.

Project farmer Bill Brown also uses a spray disinfectant on cubicle beds twice per week.

Pneumonia has also been an issue on project farms, especially in young stock. Both Bill Brown and Kevin McGrade have had issues with three-month-old heifers contracting pneumonia. These heifers have just been weaned and are at a critical stage in development.

While both farmers have been able to isolate the infected animals and treat them with an antibiotic and anti-inflammatory drug, the animals in question have suffered and their growth has been set back.

Both are considering treating their remaining heifers with a preventative vaccination.

Blanket vaccination is only necessary if there are ongoing problems in the group of stock, but also try to fix the core reason for the problem – poor ventilation, too many numbers in pens, other stress, poor-quality feed, etc.

Low milk protein

A previous Dairylink article focused on the low milk protein percentage that project farmer Robin Clements was recording for his herd.

While his average protein for 2015 was 3.32%, recent results obtained from the milk tanker and from milk recording suggested milk protein levels had fallen to around 3.09% and at one stage were as low as 3.06%. This is unusual for Robin, whose milk protein levels are normally around 3.2% for this time of year, given the stage of lactation of the herd.

Low energy in the overall diet was discovered to be the main cause of the issue on the Clements farm. Robin makes all his silage in bales and had been mixing some good bales with lesser quality bales.

The impact this had on the overall diet was a depressed energy content, which was well-below herd requirements. The poor-quality silage also depressed silage intake, which consequently limited energy intake.

Despite the fact that Robin was feeding a high-energy blend mixed with the silage, the overall impact of low-energy forage resulted in the top milking cows in the herd delivering low protein percentage milk.

Because the cows on Robin’s farm are in the early stage of lactation and freshly calved cows are entering the milking herd on a daily basis, milk yield is difficult to measure properly.

However, since the forage issues have been rectified with better-quality silage and additional concentrate to meet cow requirements, milk yields have improved and there has been a slight improvement in milk protein levels. Robin feeds a base diet to the herd which is a mixture of first- and second-cut silage with 4kg/cow of a high energy 16% crude protein blend. Based on silage analysis, the diet has been formulated to expect nine litres from the silage.

The 4kg of blend is expected to deliver an additional 8.5 litres, which means this mixture will deliver sufficient nutrients to sustain cow maintenance plus 17.5 litres of milk.

Robin then uses parlour concentrate to top cows up. While no feeding to yield is fitted to the milking parlour, a colour-coded tape attached to the cows’ tails is used to identify cows for the distribution of concentrate.

Given that the calving profile is relatively tight on the farm, only two colours are currently needed, one for high yielders (>25litres) that receive 6kg through the parlour and another for low yielders (<25litres) who receive 2kg.

In terms of milk protein, small improvements have been recorded over the Christmas period in protein percentage (up to 3.11% currently) but Robin is expecting better improvements.

Milking cows need the best quality silage available especially in early lactation. Missing out on payment benefits of better milk solids in early lactation is a costly mistake if it can be managed.

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Read full Milk Quality Focus here