Having turned the cows out to grass once a day three weeks ago, they are now back in with the landscape covered by eight inches of snow.

Now the snow has gone, the land is so saturated, I’m not sure when we will be able to get the cows out again. How I wish the fertiliser had arrived and we had put some on already.

At least this period of grazing has helped to stretch the fodder supply, but the frost and ice gave us problems.

Sunday morning was a very difficult time, starting with a well-bred heifer in her first lactation upside down dead in a water trough, but as someone told me once: “If you have livestock, you will get deadstock.”

The parlour took three hours to thaw, but I now know the frost points. This is one of the disadvantages of an open, light and airy parlour. I now regret not putting in underfloor heating when we built it two years ago.

We have just come out of a period when we thought the cows were refusing their parlour cake due to palatability problems. This happened just as they went out to grass, but this fact was misleading. It eventually turned out that a glitch in the computer was feeding too much cake.

The clue was that butterfat fell drastically and the windows in the hopper were appearing too quickly.

Modern technology

Hopefully the problem has now been addressed, but for one of my advancing years, it can be difficult to grasp modern technology. We are getting the calving facilities ready for the spring-calving group, having had problems with coccidiosis with the last of the autumn-born calves – very expensive to treat.

For one of my advancing years, it can be difficult to grasp modern technology

At the moment, we are now talking to semen companies, and I don’t know if they are just being polite if they agree with me that the two black and white societies are approaching the last chance saloon, with registrations and classifications falling. This is apparently due to more cross breeding, particularly with foreign breeds in an attempt to raise milk quality.

Gene pools

I feel we have proved with our herd that by combining the two gene pools, we have created a herd of well-formed animals, with bulls capable of producing heifers that will yield up to 5% butterfat and not too large for early grazing.

Also, surplus heifers sold on to high-yielding herds have always gone on to perform very well.

The use of Holstein genetics by British Friesians was proved when the very popular Mr Frosty was used enthusiastically by British Friesian breeders and he turned out to be half Holstein.

I’m off to Dairy Tech this week so should be able to report on the latest technology in the dairy industry, if one of advancing years can understand it.

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Farmer Writes: expensive diet leaves cows in good condition