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It must be noted that the energy demand of a suckler female increases by 50% the minute she calves. What we must absolutely not do is try and maintain her on the same diet as before.
The period between calving and conception (post-partum interval) is the most important period in a suckler's production cycle. We need to keep it as short as possible and the key to this is driving energy intake. If we don't provide enough energy in the diet she will utilise her own fat reserves.
When our animal uses up lots of her own reserves, her reproductive system will become sluggish – lengthening her post-partum interval.
Condition
Depending on genetics, some condition loss will be normal and we generally see more in first- or second-cross suckler cows, as opposed to more continental animals. The trick is to minimize it – aiming to lose less than half a body condition score between calving and conception. This equates to around 35kg of live weight.
Seperate
If you can't get to grass, separate fresh-calvers from restricted animals as soon as possible post-calving. They need to go on your 'weanling silage' – >70% DMD.
Overly thin cow, heifers or animals with twins should go on to this silage and 1-2kg of a magnesium nut to prevent grass tetany.
It is also no harm to supplement all calved cows with a magnesium nut on top of their silage – we're killing two birds by reducing the tetany risk and preventing condition loss. When these animals can get to good spring grass, we can pull supplement. If they're getting out, but 'out' is to a bare paddock around the yard, keep the meals in and let them walk into the yard to a ring feeder of silage.
Scare fodder
We are recieving dozens of querys about replacing silage with meals week on week. There are two things you really should know about your silage in order to do this successfully, dry matter and digestibility (DMD). The table below outlines how much silage you can take out of the diet for each kg of meals you offer. Note that at least 50% of the diet should be maintained as forage. For a 600kg suckler cow eating silage at 30% dry matter, she should have access to 20kg (fresh weight) silage daily at a minimum.
Grazing
As soon as animals can get to a field of meaningful grass and they're grazing contently we can pull all supplements. However, the trick now is to budget our grass so that by the time we're finished our first rotation, daily growth is ahead of demand. I would be aiming to have my whole farm grazed by the 20 April at this point. So, on a 30-acre grazing area, that's around an acre per day. If we are falling behind this, turn more stock out. If we are getting through it at a rate quicker than this, get supplementary feeds back in (silage/concentrates).
SHARING OPTIONS: