Signpost: Protein drops slightly as cows clean out poor quality paddocks
The Picture: Very Platform With Linehan In Is Alex Reseeded That Mccarthy Happy Milking Farmer Year He Dairy Dan Says The He Earlier Paddocks
Our current production is 23.5 litres/cow/day, at 3.96% butterfat and 3.64 % protein.
The protein has dropped slightly in the last few days as the cows have been cleaning out the last two or three poor quality paddocks that hadn’t been topped.
Cows are delivering over 1.84kg of milk solids per day on 2kg of meal. Somatic cell count (SCC) is currently 81, which is very satisfactory.
We completed a milk recording in the middle of July, and plan to do three or four more recordings before the end of the year.
We have been using selective dry cow therapy in our herd with a number of years, and we find the information we get from the milk recording invaluable — along with recording any cases of mastitis.
Our average, farm cover is currently 578kg DM/ha with a cover per cow of 213kg. Our pre-grazing yields are 1400kg DM/ha at the moment, with cows doing a very good job on graze-outs.
Our current demand is 49 while growth is 71, so this has given us a chance to build up some grass cover and take some pressure off. We were able to reduce the meal being fed from 4.5kg back to 2kg.
We hope to keep it down at 2kg for August, weather permitting.
We have taken out four paddocks for silage and these were cut last week. To the end of July, the variation of grass grown between paddocks on our milking platform is 7.5 tonnes/ha up to 10 tonnes/ha. Some of the lower-yielding paddocks will be identified for reseeding next spring.
We have completed our second cut silage in the last few weeks. We were very happy with the quality and quantity.
This ground has got either slurry or 1.5 bags of 18-6-12 to replace the phosphorus and potassium offtakes.
It is also getting a bag of 29-0-14 as we hope to take a third cut in mid-September.
We are very happy with the milking platform paddocks that we reseeded earlier in the year. One paddock is on its third grazing while the other has just got its second grazing post establishment.
Calves are performing well currently. They got a worm pour on recently. They are still on 1kg of meal along with grass.
We hope to scan the heifers that got sexed semen straws in the next couple of days. The cows will be pregnancy-tested through a milk sample, with any doubtful cows scanned then.
Currently, 174 cows are showing up as over 35 days since the last heat — so we are hopeful that the pregnancy tests will correlate.
