We have managed to keep the milking herd out at grass over the last few weeks with the weather drying up a bit at last.

We have over half of the herd dried off now, with a few more going on their holidays every week. Numbers are reducing quickly, which is helping to take pressure off ground. The rest of the herd will continue to be milked once a day up to Christmas, when we will dry off fully and take a break for a month before they start calving again.

The dry cows are in good condition for the most part, so are on a strict diet of straw and silage, with the in-calf heifers on silage and hay until the hay runs out. We will pick out some cows scanned with twins and a few thinner cows and feed them on the same mix as the heifers up to calving.

All of the heifers will be freeze-branded before Christmas and we will tidy up the dosing regime and vaccinations before Christmas as well. We also started feeding dry-cow minerals this week, which is a month out from calving and should be adequate time for them to take effect before the stress of calving hits the system.

Our vaccination programme at this time of year is a scour vaccine three weeks before calving and this is due to start. We will give an IBR booster at around the same time which should give the herd protection right through calving, breeding and peak milk production.

We also have to install our herd monitoring system before Christmas which will involve tagging all of the cows with an electronic tag that will monitor activity, health and fertility. With the herd size increasing, this technology should help us to still give every cow individual attention where necessary and hopefully simplify the breeding season next spring.

We went with the Cowmanager tag system to do this job, as we felt it was a bit less intrusive for the cow than the collar options on the market. This system seems to be very accurate for both fertility and health monitoring and should link well to our milking parlour system. With the automatic drafting system set up alongside it, it should be relatively straightforward to go with full AI for breeding season 2021.

We have taken a huge jump in terms of technology on the farm this year, with the electronics in the parlour and now monitoring the cow as well. With the computerised calf feeders already installed in the yard, we should be able to get through the extra numbers next spring without too much extra work.

We are also adding a bit of kit for cleaning and liming cubicles this winter. This should make life a bit easier for the winter. The next items will be some additional automatic scrapers for passages that are being scraped with a tractor for the moment. These will probably wait until next year.

Working smarter

The goal with all of this investment is to help to work smarter rather than harder next year. It will mean more time spent in the office and probably looking at the phone screen more than at cows, but hopefully it will all work out and keep us hitting our health and fertility targets next spring.

We’ve been using a lot of technology off farm as well over the last month. All of our local IFA meetings and breeding organisation meetings have been held online and while it’s not the same as being there, it does offer some unique opportunities. We had one meeting last week with people logging in from all over Ireland and the UK to share ideas and information. Hopefully we can learn from this and cherry-pick the best technologies for use again in the future.