We are hopefully making silage while the sun shines in Clara this week. We started knocking the first cut on Tuesday in 20 degrees of heat and the forecast is looking similar for the next few days.We are due a few sunny days after the washout all spring, so hopefully the weather will hold until we get the first cut in the pit, followed by some wraps, and we might even get the slurry and fertiliser out before the weather breaks.
We are hopefully making silage while the sun shines in Clara this week. We started knocking the first cut on Tuesday in 20 degrees of heat and the forecast is looking similar for the next few days.
We are due a few sunny days after the washout all spring, so hopefully the weather will hold until we get the first cut in the pit, followed by some wraps, and we might even get the slurry and fertiliser out before the weather breaks.
We have a lot of surplus grass on the grazing platform this week after a few weeks of strong growth, so we will tidy all of this up over the next few days as well. We will have to start topping some paddocks too, as there is a lot of stem appearing ahead of the cows.
Difficult grazing conditions all spring with grass left behind a few times have contributed to this, so we will push the reset button with either wraps or topping and get quality back on track as early as possible in the grazing season.
Cows are tipping along nicely at between 2.1kg and 2.2kg of milk solids on 3kg of concentrates. We will keep feeding this amount through the summer to maintain production and to carry minerals.
Fertility and breeding
They are responding very well to this level of feeding, with fertility performance looking very good so far.
We had a 95% submission rate in the first three weeks and so far a very high percentage seem to have held to that service. We will see how they turn out at the end of the year.
We will continue with AI for one more week, with the cows to finish out at six weeks. We will then let the bulls out and let nature take its course.
We have swapped around the bulls with the heifers, so they will all get one more month with bulls before we pull the plug on the 2018 breeding season.
Reseeding
We reseeded the first 25 acres of the heifer ground this week as well. We went with an Abergain, Aberchoice mix. The seed was supplied and sown by local contractor William Corrigan.
We grazed the paddocks bare, stitched the seed straight into the existing sward and the old grasses will then be sprayed off a few days later. This should give us an approximate 42-day turnaround to be back in grazing the new grass with a clean sward.
We weaned another batch of calves this week as well, so we are down to the last dozen on milk. These will get milk replacer for another few weeks to push their weights on a bit before going out to grass.
The older calves are at grass for a few weeks now and will get a dose at some stage when we get a spare hour.
The first trip back in along the roadway is always eventful, so we will try to have plenty of help available for that job.
If we can get all of this out of the way by the end of the month we will take a few days of holidays. It’s been a long, busy spring from calving right through to breeding and then silage and slurry, etc, especially with the stress of the weather and feed shortages doubling up the usual spring workload.
Hopefully everyone gets the opportunity to down tools for a few days and recharge the batteries – and sooner rather than later.
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