Greenfield grazing season finishes

There are still over 200 cows milking (once-a-day) on the Greenfield Farm in Co Kilkenny as the eighth year of milk production on this leased farm nears an end.

Cows have been dried off in batches of 25 to 30 for the last number of weeks.

At this stage all thin, lame, and cows calving in the first couple of weeks of February have been dried off. The balance of cows will be dried off over the next two weeks.

Over 400 bales of round bale silage have been fed to the herd in November

Grazing is over for 2017 despite the fact there is another paddock of grass that could be grazed off but the decision is taken to hold it for next spring. Average grass cover is just shy of 800kg across the farm.

There are five or six paddocks with covers over 1,000kg so this will form the platform of grazing for early February. Growth rates have been very good over the last number of weeks so unless we get a prolonged period of frost and very cold weather there should be plenty of feed on the farm, but, it’s far too early to be definite about that yet.

Hoof health

At this time of the year walking long distances becomes a problem as cows’ hooves are very soft and tender after the long year at grass and the wet ground over the last number of weeks. Invariably the paddocks near the parlour are closed for early grazing so it’s paddocks over one kilometre from the yard that have grass and it takes a long time to motivate cows to go to and from the parlour.

Cows are now milking from the topless cubicles and this includes the cows that are scanned not in calf but are still on the farm. As of yet we have no news from the Department from the one cow that was slaughtered as a doubtful after the last TB test. The cow made €500 in the factory and tissue samples have been sent for culturing but it takes a long time to get a result.

Silage

Over 400 bales of round bale silage have been fed to the herd in November (600 in total of the year to date) and to date the tally is about 250kg of meal fed per cow.

The last milk test result shows the cows milking on average just shy of 1kg of milk solids per cow per day (6.11% fat and 4.27% protein with lactose 4.60%). Somatic cell count (SCC) has lifted significantly with some tests exceeding 500,000 cells/ml. Liming of the topless cubicles has started on dry days to try and reduce bacteria count.

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