Sleep is like money, prestige and socks - you only understand its true value when you don’t have any. Perhaps the lack of sleep during the current calving season is precisely the reason why I am an extra bit cranky of late, but if there is one thing sure to annoy me, it’s the ‘hard-sell’ of a product that I ‘have to buy’ because of all the things I ‘should be’ doing differently in a few weeks time when I will no longer be constrained by milk quotas.

Door-to-door salesman

Salesmen who try to flog unnecessary products to farmers as a new era in dairying dawns really irritate me. One entertaining example of late was when a sales rep called to sell a new silage additive.

He had numerous studies in his arsenal to show improved performance, with the bold claim of one litre extra of milk per cow per day. However, there was no correlation between the data in his reports (TMR, winter milk, UK system) to support his claims in the Irish context. Yes, we do make a lot of pit silage and quality is very important, but pit silage for me is only a feed for dry cows.

Correspondingly, bales made from surplus grass during the summer months is feed for milking cows only when the need arises, which is perhaps in the spring or towards the end of their lactation. I have no doubt the silage additive in question is good and would work fine in the appropriate system.

However, with the expected return on milk this year there certainly is no room for this type of indiscreet spending. Grass measuring, budgeting and condition scoring of cows does not cost anything.

Farm update

Calving on the farm is going smoothly. Four weeks in and the 100th cow calved today, with a further 40 to go. However, I will expect to have thirty surplus cows to sell. The first 30 calves went to grass on the 19 February. They have freedom to access a shed in their paddock and are on once-a-day feeding. This has freed up a lot of space in the calf house, and a lot of my time, but I still won’t have time for the ‘hard-sell’.