This week will see the last of the in-calf heifers brought into the shed. They are in great order after an exceptional grazing season. We will weigh them over the next few weeks when they are getting their winter doses and see how well they have done over the season.

The weanling heifers were weighed and dosed at housing two weeks ago. They weighed 253kg average across the board with the January/February-born calves weighing 261kg.

These weanlings were pushed very hard as calves in the shed but, other than a light batch, they got no meal at grass. For the last few months they have been pushed harder grazing off paddocks but have continued to do well.

They were batched according to weight in the shed, with the lightest batch getting 2kg of meal per day for the winter.

Hopefully with the extra feeding for the last two months at grass and the extra meal in the shed, we can get all of these heifers to target weight for breeding by May.

They are all late calves and that is the main reason for them falling behind. Hopefully, next year, we can sell all of the heifer calves born after the end of February and move away from having to manage this light group separately.

Minimum number

We are down to 80 cows milking this week and these will be dried off by the middle of the month. Although we always drop to the minimum number of cows over the winter, this will be the first time that the parlour will be shut down since it was built 17 years ago.

We have a lot of jobs to catch up on over the dry period. With increased cow numbers in recent years, it is more important than ever now to take this break from milking to prepare for the busy season ahead.

We will calve 200 cows in the first three weeks of calving so everything will be geared around getting organised for this over the next few weeks, with the calving area, calf pens and feeding equipment the first priority. The milking parlour will also get a service and an overhaul before the start of the new season.

Routine

We will try to keep to some sort of a nine-to-five work routine over the next few weeks, aside from night checks. We have one or two days dosing and sorting out cows to do but, other than that, we should get most jobs done in normal working hours.

It will be great to hopefully start the new season with a blank slate, with calf sheds bedded and disinfected, fresh liners in the parlour and hopefully a fully rested team to get stuck into the spring workload.

The tags have been ordered for the spring as well.

We had the option of not paying a levy to ICBF when ordering the tags for the first time this year.

About 70% of farmers have opted out of paying this levy, which is probably a result of a combination of tight cashflow on farm and some dissatisfaction with the various indices, especially after the dairy base change this year.

Hopefully this is a challenge that the ICBF will rise to this year and over the next few years.

It has a big public relations job to do that it has been largely able to ignore in previous years.

The optional levy makes ICBF a lot more accountable to all of its farmer stakeholders and we will see this influence the direction the organisation, and possibly the index, takes over the next few years.