There’s a bit of crossover between the autumn and spring herds. The drying-off process is under way as milk production winds down for the spring ladies. Meanwhile, one lonely straggler held on to her calf to extend my autumn calving spread as far as she could.

My season finished at 52 days, helped by the fact that only one of the five cows served in the last fortnight of breeding actually held in-calf. It makes my calving figures look good but also makes me seriously question the waste of time spent tail painting, watching and serving late calvers.

Cell counts had hovered around the 200 mark all year, blamed on the OAD milking. Thankfully no mastitis issues but I couldn’t take the chance of subclinical infections causing problems. The cheapest and least work option to cure is during the dry period as the antibiotic has more chance to work.

Multitasking

Dairy farmers are used to multitasking but being a man I don’t push it during a task like drying off. Cows to be dried are identified during milking and I mark them with a crayon and draft them. I then go and feed everything that’s hungry such as calves and myself. I return any urgent phone calls, switch the phone to silent and leave it in the dairy. I arrange the tubes in bunches of four along one side of the parlour. Teat-cleaning wipes are added, I make sure the paper towel dispensers are full. I put a bucket for the used tubes in the pit. My thinking is to eliminate any distractions and just concentrate on the job.

After that it is all about following a routine. Front teats are cleaned before back, and back teats are tubed before front. That way I don’t contaminate the teat ends before tubing. I constantly wash and dry my gloves and use teat spray to disinfect. I don’t spare the teat spray on the cows either, using a small hand sprayer as the parlour system works off the vacuum line.

The final task is to remember that no job is completed till the paperwork is done. Covering the law is only one part; making sure any cow calving before the withdrawal period doesn’t contaminate the milk tank is much more important.

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