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The heatwave seems to be coming to an end this week as I write this, but every mower, rake and baler has been well tested over the last few days with plenty of hay and silage made in all parts of the country.
We made some wraps from surplus grass on the milking platform ourselves, however we’ve left the second cut to bulk up for a few more days before putting it in the pit.
It looks excellent at the moment but we have plenty of good quality feed in the yard for the winter for milkers and youngstock and now we need a bit more bulk to keep the in-calf cows ticking over for the winter.
Our cows are usually in good enough condition at drying off and it’s only a matter of maintaining them through the dry period so high-quality silage can cause its own problems with cows putting on too much weight before calving, resulting in metabolic problems soon after calving.
Hopefully we will get the balance right and get it harvested later this week when it has bulked up a little more.
Grass quality
Grass quality has been an issue for most of this month on the milking platform with the wet weather at the start of the month causing problems with ground conditions, making it very difficult to achieve good clean-outs and even harder to get in and top off high residuals or bale surpluses.
The hot, dry weather since has multiplied this problem with grass getting stressed and shooting up seed heads very quickly.
We’ve resorted to pre-mowing some paddocks and topping or baling the rest. Most of the platform has been topped, baled or pre-mowed now so things are back under control for the next round.
Milk yield has suffered through this period though and dropped to 22 l/cow. Protein levels have also dropped back close to 3.3% which is well behind this time last year, but hopefully we will get some recovery over the next few weeks and see things return to normal.
Our re-seeds are almost ready for grazing now as well so this should also help in the recovery. Some of the drop could be the result of cows hopefully going in calf very quickly this year, with the exceptional weather earlier in the season.
Scanning
We have our herd test coming up in the first week of July so we will pull out the bulls at that stage and scan the cows at the end of the month.
If we can get a good scan and hit our target of 5% empty, we can selectively cull another 5% of the herd on production, age and type and still hit our target numbers for the herd next year.
Bulling activity has fallen off a lot over the past few days as we push past the third round of breeding so we should hit these targets.
We haven’t done enough selective culling over the last few years so there are a few passengers starting to pop up in the herd now. Some older girls are struggling with legs and feet and a few are milking less than we would like so these will be culled as well.
A few of the older girls have also started to develop SCC problems this year and, while the herd SCC is still under 100,000, these problem cows will pass on their problems if not moved on this year.
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