Watch: fodder and money savings by restricting cows

Silage supplies are running tight for this winter. With 38 spring-calving cows and calves housed since late August, along with autumn-born bulls and steers for finishing, there is already three months of winter fodder used up.

We have carried out a few fodder budgets and have re-worked the winter feed programme to try to stretch supplies as far as possible.

Spring-calving cows with the strongest bull calves were weaned on 6 September. Heifers and lighter bull calves that were too small to come off cows remained on cows for another month.

Bull calves averaged 230kg on 6 September. Some may argue that these calves should remain on the cows for another couple of months, but they were settled in the shed and eating meals.

However, we felt it was more cost effective to wean the calves and increase the meal levels fed directly to calves to maintain performance rather than feeding large quantities of silage to the cow to try and maintain milk production six to seven months into her lactation period.

Silage restriction

With cows dried off in good body condition, they have been put on to a maintenance diet since then which is helping to save on silage.

We have 56 spring cows scanned in-calf for 2018 along with 16 in-calf heifers. Six cows have been penned as a separate group as they are carrying too much flesh. They are being restricted to 20kg/day of second-cut silage.

The remaining cows are in ideal body condition score (BCS) of 2.5 to 3.0 and therefore being maintained on 25kg/day of second-cut silage.

Cows are being fed through the wagon daily which allows for easier restriction of forage. Table 1 outlines the feed programme for the spring cows at the ideal BCS.

Second-cut silage has the following feed value:

The feed guidelines are based on a 630kg cow from 24 weeks prior to calving right up to one week pre-calving.

As outlined in Table 1, our cows would typically eat around 36kg/day of silage on an ad-lib basis. However, given the feed value of the silage outlined, if they were fed on an ad-lib basis they would be getting too much energy and protein from the diet and end up putting on excessive flesh.

Therefore, we have been restricting cows since early October. Cows are roughly 12 weeks from calving at this point in time and currently getting 25kg/day.

As nutritional demand increases throughout gestation, silage levels will be increased gradually towards ad-lib levels to meet the cow’s energy requirement just prior to calving.

By two weeks pre-calving, cows will be on ad-lib silage.

The other benefits of having cows in ideal body condition now and being able to restrict silage is that cows are fitter at calving, leading to fewer calving difficulties.

As cows have fewer calving difficulties, they will come back into heat post-calving much faster which helps to maintain a high conception rate in a shorter, compact breeding period.

Based on Table 1, we can make a saving of approximately 1.63t of silage per cow in the spring herd based on body condition and the feed value of our second-cut silage. The saving is calculated over a 161-day period which runs from October through to March when cows start to calve. Over this period, there is a saving of 91t of silage over 56 cows in the spring herd. Taking silage at a value of £30/t, this amounts to a saving of £2,730 across the spring-calving herd.

The bull calves had an average daily liveweight gain of 1.1kg/day from birth to weaning which is lower than we would have liked. Calf weight was adjusted to a standard 200 days of age to allow for a fair comparison across the herd and remove the effect of age.

This gives calves a standard weaning weight of 258kg, which was 44% of mature cow weight. Mature cows weighed 599kg at weaning.

Heifer calves performed slightly better with a daily gain of 1.14kg/day up to weaning. However, their weaning weight was 38% of mature cow weight.

The bull calves are now on first-cut silage and 4kg/day of a 16% ration costing £189/t. In January, meal levels will be increased with bulls moving to ad-lib feeding for the final 120 days prior to slaughter.

Replacements

To improve the maternal performance of the herd, we have changed our approach to our replacements.

While we will keep our best heifers from our best cows, we have sourced 15 beef-sired, dairy-bred heifers.

All heifers are sourced from one farm and we know the background of the calves in terms of breeding and herd health. Calves cost £200/head at three to four weeks old. They are on once-a-day feeding of 3.5 litres of milk plus straw and a calf starter mix. Once they reach 100kg, they are weaned off milk.

Pneumonia

We have had problems with pneumonia in the past couple of weeks and lost three of our spring-born bull weanlings.

Ventilation in sheds is good as sheds are open-ended and there is good airflow without creating draughts.

Calves were treated early but some bulls deteriorated. The three bulls that died were sent for post-mortem and mycoplasma was shown to be the cause of death.

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All reports from the BETTER farm NI programme