The crucial May measurements for the staff in Kilkenny are grass and condition score. There are lots of other measures taken, such as the number of cows bred, rain and milk sales, but in terms of long-term influence and weekly importance, grass and herd condition score take priority in May.
May is an important month for conserving winter feed in Kilkenny. It’s the one month of the year that you are almost guaranteed excellent growth from rain and sunshine. More importantly, it is possible to fuel the fire with nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur. Remember, this farm is dry and windswept and is often crying out for rain from mid-June onwards, so May is the one month you can depend on for quality grass and building winter feed stocks. It is safe to push the stocking rate high and be fairly safe that you can deliver on the required growth. There are 30ha stopped for first-cut silage, so that leaves 90ha for grazing (3.56 cows/ha) but some of this area will be taken out as short-term silage, depending on growth. Therefore, the stocking rate will vary a little from week to week. Silage has generally been growing well for the last month. Last week for the first time, pre-grazing covers went ahead of the cows, so farm manager Tom Lyng made the decision to take out three paddocks for a light cut of silage. He made 138 bales from 46 acres (three bales/acre).
If you can see seven or eight days of the nice quality grazing ahead of you in Kilkenny at this time of the year, you know you have plenty of grass. The key objective on the grazing area is maximising and maintaining quality. Let the milking cows into a grass cover that is gone too strong (over 1,600kg to 1,700kg). While they won’t complain, the bulk tank will suffer this time and the next time the cows graze that paddock.
Clean-out is important and if you let them into a strong cover and force them to clean it out, everything potentially suffers – the milk tank, condition score, poaching, etc.
Keep the pre-grazing right and they can clean it out without any suffering. Of course, you can’t get it right all the time and wet grazing (like last weekend and this week) will mean you can’t always get perfect clean-out in each paddock. However, all you can do then is let the paddock clean up and get back into it again early (in two weeks) or target it for a light cut of silage the next time round.
Bulling on track
Breeding of maiden heifers is finished. The plan was to breed for six days and then inject with prostaglandin (PG) what wasn’t bred, so they would be submitted for AI and then let the clean up bulls pick up the rest. Of the 80 heifers, 71 were submitted for AI.
The other nine heifers will be picked up by the stock bulls. The cows continue to be bred to standing heat. The whole herd was scanned just prior to the start of breeding and cows over 30 days calved that were not seen bulling were given a CIDR. It means that they all have been submitted for AI in the first three weeks of breeding.
While conception rates might be slightly lower with these treated cows, there is a better chance they will be presented for AI again in the second three weeks of breeding while AI is ongoing. The herd is six years on the farm and, theoretically, we should be moving away from having to use CIDRs to do this type of treatment as better genetics should be established. However, we’re not there yet. Exactly why is not clear – we haven’t had the opportunity to do any selective culling of April calvers or poor breeders largely because of the cell count issue that hampered the farm in the early years.
Fertility hasn’t been bad (less than 10% not in calf) and the replacement rate has been relatively high since the start, in late 2009, but there has been a fall-out from the normal issues, such as lameness, with large herds.
Breeding is going well with good strong heats on show. Tail paint is the order of the day and cows are continuously topped up. On Monday, 12 cows were submitted, while nine were submitted on Tuesday. This means that up to Tuesday over 190 cows were submitted from the 315 cows available for breeding. Tuesday was day 13 of breeding. Effectively, it leaves 115 cows available for the last 10 days of breeding in the first round. Not all will be picked up but, if Tom averages seven or eight per day, he will get close to a 90% submission rate.
Heat aids
The four autumn-born Holstein Friesian vasectomised bulls have arrived and are lounging around in grass waiting to join the milking herd. They will be fitted with chin balls and join the herd in week four of breeding.
The trick is to keep them well fed when they join the herd and try to get a few kilos of meal into them, either in the field or in the yard, if they come in with the cows.
Obviously, rest is important as well, so switching them on and off is crucial. Milk sales are going well. The Glanbia Agrilink site, where you can view all details of milk collections, has been discontinued and the new Glanbia Connect site is operational, so information was not available this week as a new registration process is ongoing.
Two herds
There is still a second herd of 28 cows (9% of the herd – lame cows, old, high cell count, etc) running as a separate group. They are being milked twice a day but stay in paddocks close to the parlour.
There are 65 cows on once-a-day milking (OAD) and they were cows condition scored less than 2.75 three weeks ago, just before the start of the breeding season.
They stay in the main herd but have a blue tape on their tail, which means clusters are not put on these cows in the evening. Some question why they stay in the main herd and it’s down to practicalities and the fact that having three groups of cows is not on.
Herd average yield with the 65 cows on OAD is about 23 litres and the most recent fat was 4.20% and protein 3.81% (1.90kg MS/day) stocked at 3.5 cows/hectare. A bigger question is why there are 65 cows on OAD (20% of the herd). It’s a good question and every year we seem to have a proportion of the herd that is under-scored just before breeding.
In the main, they are first and second calvers that have calved in early February and, by mid-April, they have walked through a good bit of the farm and produced 10 weeks of milk.
Depending on the grazing and weather conditions, there is no place to hide in Kilkenny and the cows are asked to survive in the main on grass only with a small supplement, depending on grass supply. That’s the main excuse but probably not the full picture.
The herd will be scored again next week and a large proportion of the 65 cows will go back to twice-a-day milking. Some suggest that the younger cows in the herd have got that bit leggier and more fine boned in recent years. I must pull out their breeding and look at them as a subset.
If you have to move cows to once-a-day milking, you are keeping cows in the herd that shouldn’t be in the system. Perhaps, but I don’t agree. I think the right genetics can sort the fertility problem and OAD milking is like giving an energy boost to this group at the right time in the marathon.
Milk fat and protein are the best we have seen in Kilkenny for May. Yes, volume is lower but I remember 10 years ago when a protein rate over 3.2% in May was rejoiced from the best genetics money could buy. Volume was probably 28 litres per cow but the herd was likely to have been on at least 3kg of meal per cow per day and at least 20% of cows weren’t going in calf in spring.
Last week, three paddocks (46 acres) were taken out for round-baled silage as they were gone too strong for grazing. They were cut on Thursday and wrapped on Friday. While the material was very fresh, the broken weather doesn’t leave much time for wilting.
Tom is worried that the material might be too fresh to preserve properly but, either way, the priority is on managing grass for the milking cows and keeping what is presented to them leafy and digestible.
There is a good mix of clover in some of the Kilkenny paddocks but, as they are mainly grazing (not silage), the clover is staying at a manageable level. I hear the cows on the Clonakilty Clover trial have again started delivering an additional two litres of milk extra per cow compared with their counterparts on grass only.
There is no doubt but clover is adding something to the sward quality in Kilkenny and when it is nicely interspersed with the grass and neither is dominating, it makes a great mix.
Good May growth driving decisions to increase the stocking rate but weekly or biweekly walks are essential.Breeding is on track as far as the submission rate is concerned but, as yet, we are only halfway through the first round.Milk solids are very good – volume and protein is driven by grass quality.Condition scoring now is crucial and as important as grass measuring as actions will decide success.
The crucial May measurements for the staff in Kilkenny are grass and condition score. There are lots of other measures taken, such as the number of cows bred, rain and milk sales, but in terms of long-term influence and weekly importance, grass and herd condition score take priority in May.
May is an important month for conserving winter feed in Kilkenny. It’s the one month of the year that you are almost guaranteed excellent growth from rain and sunshine. More importantly, it is possible to fuel the fire with nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur. Remember, this farm is dry and windswept and is often crying out for rain from mid-June onwards, so May is the one month you can depend on for quality grass and building winter feed stocks. It is safe to push the stocking rate high and be fairly safe that you can deliver on the required growth. There are 30ha stopped for first-cut silage, so that leaves 90ha for grazing (3.56 cows/ha) but some of this area will be taken out as short-term silage, depending on growth. Therefore, the stocking rate will vary a little from week to week. Silage has generally been growing well for the last month. Last week for the first time, pre-grazing covers went ahead of the cows, so farm manager Tom Lyng made the decision to take out three paddocks for a light cut of silage. He made 138 bales from 46 acres (three bales/acre).
If you can see seven or eight days of the nice quality grazing ahead of you in Kilkenny at this time of the year, you know you have plenty of grass. The key objective on the grazing area is maximising and maintaining quality. Let the milking cows into a grass cover that is gone too strong (over 1,600kg to 1,700kg). While they won’t complain, the bulk tank will suffer this time and the next time the cows graze that paddock.
Clean-out is important and if you let them into a strong cover and force them to clean it out, everything potentially suffers – the milk tank, condition score, poaching, etc.
Keep the pre-grazing right and they can clean it out without any suffering. Of course, you can’t get it right all the time and wet grazing (like last weekend and this week) will mean you can’t always get perfect clean-out in each paddock. However, all you can do then is let the paddock clean up and get back into it again early (in two weeks) or target it for a light cut of silage the next time round.
Bulling on track
Breeding of maiden heifers is finished. The plan was to breed for six days and then inject with prostaglandin (PG) what wasn’t bred, so they would be submitted for AI and then let the clean up bulls pick up the rest. Of the 80 heifers, 71 were submitted for AI.
The other nine heifers will be picked up by the stock bulls. The cows continue to be bred to standing heat. The whole herd was scanned just prior to the start of breeding and cows over 30 days calved that were not seen bulling were given a CIDR. It means that they all have been submitted for AI in the first three weeks of breeding.
While conception rates might be slightly lower with these treated cows, there is a better chance they will be presented for AI again in the second three weeks of breeding while AI is ongoing. The herd is six years on the farm and, theoretically, we should be moving away from having to use CIDRs to do this type of treatment as better genetics should be established. However, we’re not there yet. Exactly why is not clear – we haven’t had the opportunity to do any selective culling of April calvers or poor breeders largely because of the cell count issue that hampered the farm in the early years.
Fertility hasn’t been bad (less than 10% not in calf) and the replacement rate has been relatively high since the start, in late 2009, but there has been a fall-out from the normal issues, such as lameness, with large herds.
Breeding is going well with good strong heats on show. Tail paint is the order of the day and cows are continuously topped up. On Monday, 12 cows were submitted, while nine were submitted on Tuesday. This means that up to Tuesday over 190 cows were submitted from the 315 cows available for breeding. Tuesday was day 13 of breeding. Effectively, it leaves 115 cows available for the last 10 days of breeding in the first round. Not all will be picked up but, if Tom averages seven or eight per day, he will get close to a 90% submission rate.
Heat aids
The four autumn-born Holstein Friesian vasectomised bulls have arrived and are lounging around in grass waiting to join the milking herd. They will be fitted with chin balls and join the herd in week four of breeding.
The trick is to keep them well fed when they join the herd and try to get a few kilos of meal into them, either in the field or in the yard, if they come in with the cows.
Obviously, rest is important as well, so switching them on and off is crucial. Milk sales are going well. The Glanbia Agrilink site, where you can view all details of milk collections, has been discontinued and the new Glanbia Connect site is operational, so information was not available this week as a new registration process is ongoing.
Two herds
There is still a second herd of 28 cows (9% of the herd – lame cows, old, high cell count, etc) running as a separate group. They are being milked twice a day but stay in paddocks close to the parlour.
There are 65 cows on once-a-day milking (OAD) and they were cows condition scored less than 2.75 three weeks ago, just before the start of the breeding season.
They stay in the main herd but have a blue tape on their tail, which means clusters are not put on these cows in the evening. Some question why they stay in the main herd and it’s down to practicalities and the fact that having three groups of cows is not on.
Herd average yield with the 65 cows on OAD is about 23 litres and the most recent fat was 4.20% and protein 3.81% (1.90kg MS/day) stocked at 3.5 cows/hectare. A bigger question is why there are 65 cows on OAD (20% of the herd). It’s a good question and every year we seem to have a proportion of the herd that is under-scored just before breeding.
In the main, they are first and second calvers that have calved in early February and, by mid-April, they have walked through a good bit of the farm and produced 10 weeks of milk.
Depending on the grazing and weather conditions, there is no place to hide in Kilkenny and the cows are asked to survive in the main on grass only with a small supplement, depending on grass supply. That’s the main excuse but probably not the full picture.
The herd will be scored again next week and a large proportion of the 65 cows will go back to twice-a-day milking. Some suggest that the younger cows in the herd have got that bit leggier and more fine boned in recent years. I must pull out their breeding and look at them as a subset.
If you have to move cows to once-a-day milking, you are keeping cows in the herd that shouldn’t be in the system. Perhaps, but I don’t agree. I think the right genetics can sort the fertility problem and OAD milking is like giving an energy boost to this group at the right time in the marathon.
Milk fat and protein are the best we have seen in Kilkenny for May. Yes, volume is lower but I remember 10 years ago when a protein rate over 3.2% in May was rejoiced from the best genetics money could buy. Volume was probably 28 litres per cow but the herd was likely to have been on at least 3kg of meal per cow per day and at least 20% of cows weren’t going in calf in spring.
Last week, three paddocks (46 acres) were taken out for round-baled silage as they were gone too strong for grazing. They were cut on Thursday and wrapped on Friday. While the material was very fresh, the broken weather doesn’t leave much time for wilting.
Tom is worried that the material might be too fresh to preserve properly but, either way, the priority is on managing grass for the milking cows and keeping what is presented to them leafy and digestible.
There is a good mix of clover in some of the Kilkenny paddocks but, as they are mainly grazing (not silage), the clover is staying at a manageable level. I hear the cows on the Clonakilty Clover trial have again started delivering an additional two litres of milk extra per cow compared with their counterparts on grass only.
There is no doubt but clover is adding something to the sward quality in Kilkenny and when it is nicely interspersed with the grass and neither is dominating, it makes a great mix.
Good May growth driving decisions to increase the stocking rate but weekly or biweekly walks are essential.Breeding is on track as far as the submission rate is concerned but, as yet, we are only halfway through the first round.Milk solids are very good – volume and protein is driven by grass quality.Condition scoring now is crucial and as important as grass measuring as actions will decide success. 
This is a subscriber-only article
SHARING OPTIONS: