Breeding

Up to three weeks of breeding have been completed in a lot of herds. Most report good activity, with strong submission rates.

No matter what you hear about the neighbour’s herd, do up a report on your own herd in terms of what cows have or have not been submitted. Go through the cows that havn’t been submitted and start looking at options.

Some will be late-calvers, some you might have missed for heat detection, some might be dirty or even have an infection and some might be coming in heat.

Many farmers haven’t got the professional in to handle any cows yet and often the first step is to give this small cohort of the herd a shot of prostaglandin (PG) to initiate standing heat. If they don’t come in heat after that, many will get them handled by a professional.

Act sooner rather than later for those cows calved long enough (over 40 days) to maximise the opportunity of keeping them in the herd.

Hold off leaving out the vasectomised bulls until you really need them to help pick up cows in heat. They will get injured and/or tired if they are overworked so look after them until you really need them when the majority of the herd are in calf.

New clean-up stock bulls need to be sourced soon, especially if they are going to be used with maiden heifers. Again, by right they need to be isolated and vaccinated before joining the herd.

Silage stocks

Farmers need to keep the focus on maximising winter feed silage stocks. I’m firmly of the opinion that when grass growth is peaking, it is the best time to bulk up stocks. If you can conserve more feed later in the summer/autumn then, for me, its a bonus.

For a lot of farmers, it can get too dry or wet later in the year to bulk stocks, so it is by far the best to maximise growth now and pit or bale it.

The other issue is that spring-born calves grow through the summer and by the back end they are eating a lot more grass and farmers need a bigger area to keep them going.

For most dairy farmers, grass silage will remain the winter feed of choice. It’s easier to manage – you can add it on top of another pit, it’s easier to preserve than drier feeds and it won’t go off as easy when you are feeding it out.

Maize, wholecrop etc are options and I see more this year than other years but you need to be well set up to ensile it properly and it’s not as flexible a product to feed out or stop feeding out.

Calf health

There are lots of issues in the fields with young calves. Some of the calf scour issues we have covered here. Worms and scour are more common so think prevention or early treatment before you start to lose thrive. At this time of the year we also often hear cases of vitamin B1 deficiency and calves losing sight. If noticed early it can be treated with vitamin booster injection.