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In unsettled weather, you just have to roll the dice and take your chances when it comes to silage.
That was the case here last week. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It did work last week and now over 70% of the silage requirement is in and the next week should see more done.
Grazing drives the silage on the home block, so the luxury isn’t there to wait for perfect conditions every time. That lesson was learned the hard way five years ago. I woke up on 28 June 2012 to find the road down to the beach gone. It was washed out to sea following massive rainfall during the night. There was a trench over two feet deep cut down to the shore line.
A week later, after waiting for good conditions, we got the silage cut. Volume was our concern then as bulk is what we were told we needed for feeding sucklers. We got bulk alright at 17 bales/acre but it was absolute trash as we discovered during the hard spring of 2013. That 12-month period was an education. Quality matters in silage, regardless of your stock type.
You can’t take a punt on what might be in the bag when you open it up.
While working on the herd health plan with the vet earlier this year, we decided to take a different approach to worming the stock. Rather than dose for worms in late May or June because that’s what we always do, we will use faecal egg counts to determine whether we need to dose or not.
There are two reasons behind the idea – firstly, to avoid unnecessary use of worming products and, secondly, to see if we can use genetics to help identify if some lines are more naturally resistant to parasites. Seven of the breeding heifers all come from the same bloodline and some from this cow family have been more susceptible to rumen fluke in particular over the years.
Three pooled dung samples were taken, from the aforementioned group, the remainder of the replacements and the cull heifers.
Faecal egg counts
The plan is to do faecal egg counts in May and June and early September to see what the difference is. Results showed all groups had low egg counts in late May so another will be taken before the end of this month.
The vet is hopeful that if they remain at the current levels we won’t have to worm until housing and take more samples then. It requires a small bit of patience to wait in the field for them to dung rather than go through the hassle of rounding them up to take samples.
As worm count was low but liver fluke was present, we decided to treat the finishing heifers, because there is more pressure on them to perform. The aim is to sell them in late autumn.
There is less panic on the breeding heifers. If fluke is present in them after the June results they will be treated; if not, they will be left alone. Samples will be taken from the cows and calves this week to see what plan we will use on them. The finishers received a dose to cover all stages of fluke.
They were convenient to the yard also, which makes it easier to bring them in. As I have learned with time, you have to play a few mind games when rounding up beef cattle. Small things such as timing yard work around where they are grazing and when they are finished in a paddock saves a lot of time and heartache.
Silage budgeting and battling stem
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