Shed management:

With the vast majority of cows now housed for the winter, attention turns to managing them in the shed. The key thing is access to feed and water. With more cows on many farms, some sheds are stocked higher than before. While having more cows than cubicles isn’t ideal, not having enough feed space is a bigger sin in my book. If feeding silage ad lib, cows need 300mm or one foot of feed-space per cow in the shed. If you are feeding meal or restricting silage intakes, then this doubles as every cow must be able to feed at the one time.

Ad-lib feeding means there is always silage in front of the cows. If you have to push in silage to cows in the morning, then you are not feeding ad lib and are actually restricting silage. Only cows that are being dried off or are over-fat and on very good quality silage should be on restricted feeding. To gain body condition score over the winter, most cows need to be fed silage ad lib. This is why feed space is so important. When feed space is restricted, the dominant cows will bully the lower order cows and they won’t gain BCS. Measure out how much feed space you have per cow and if you have less than 300mm per cow then take action. Some farmers undertake some short-term measures, such as placing a feed barrier in front of doors, or allowing cows out to a yard to eat.

Soil sampling:

December is the month for taking soil samples. If there was ever a year to address soil fertility then this is it. Fertiliser prices haven’t been as low in years. Farmers have access to lower cost credit and milk price is looking better for next year. Sampling is relatively cheap, so every paddock should be sampled to get an accurate picture of where your farm is. Some people are wondering if fertiliser should be bought now before prices move up again. There are definitely good deals available for delivery in spring with payment later. With oil forecast to rise, we can probably expect fertiliser to follow. On compound fertiliser, it’s an absolute waste of time spreading phosphorus on soils low in pH. The target pH is 6.2 – spreading phosphorus on soils above or below this just means that it will be locked up in the soil and not available to the plant. High clay content soils and soils high in iron and aluminium will lock up more phosphorus. Having the correct pH will help to release this and make it available to the plant. Therefore, lime is critical. Soil sample and fix the pH first. Don’t spread more than 2t/acre of lime in any one year.

Cash flow:

What lessons can we learn from the recent downturn? Globally, Irish dairy farmers probably fared the best. Our low-cost and low-debt model is proving resilient. But within Ireland there is a big variation, with some farmers under pressure. Now is the time to go through and analyse the figures for your farm. Where is the income coming from and where is the money going? Separately, some people are talking about fixing interest rates on long-term debt. The cost of fixing is lower than normal at present.