I opened and started feeding my pit silage last week. It hasn’t been tested yet, but I would expect it to be of excellent quality.
The first cut especially was taken in absolutely ideal conditions at the end of May, in 23°C heat and glorious sunshine.
Cows were on this silage for around five days when I ended up with one of them down. Not one hundred percent sure with what, but I would suspect a case of grass tetany.
Cows had been getting mostly straw and a little baled silage from they were housed a couple of weeks ago. Then when I opened the pit, they were put on to a complete silage diet.
Mineral recovery
As we all know, one of the predisposing factors leading to grass tetany is low dietary magnesium, leafy grass tends to be low and this silage is quite leafy.
High dietary potassium (K) is another risk factor and as this silage was cut a little earlier than intended due to the good weather, there is a possibility that it could be high in K.
Also, a cow carrying excess body condition is at higher risk of suffering from milk fever than a cow in optimum body condition and this cow is probably carrying a little excess fat.
A couple of bottles of calcium, a couple of bottles of magnesium and a bit of TLC and she seems to be well on the way to recovery. This cow is due to calf in the next couple of weeks so I’ll just have to keep a tight eye on her until then.
Nice batch
I’ve sold some stock and bought some stock in the past couple of days - a nice batch of six AI-bred gold Charolais heifers to a farmer that I often sell heifers to.
These stock haven’t left the farm yet, but will hopefully be weighed and moved later on this week.
They were weighed shortly after they were weaned around a month ago, so it will be interesting to see what kind of weight gain they have achieved since on good grass and around 2kg of meal.
Sheep game
I’ve also started to buy a few store lambs. This is my third season back in the sheep game, albeit on a small scale.
I had intended to up my numbers this year, as the past few years were reasonably successful, but with the high price of lambs it’s hard to know what to do.
The first batch bought are 4kg lighter than my average last year and the price is €13 more than my average for last year. However, these lambs are of better quality.
I was talking to a man a few weeks ago about the same topic and wondering whether or not I’d buy any lambs at all.
He said: “If you buy lambs, you mightn’t make any money, but if you don’t buy lambs you definitely won’t make any money.”
I thought it a good enough way to look at things.
Farmer writes: hard to know what to do
Farmer Writes: the countdown to calving is on
Farmer Writes: weaning time – luckily I’m not a light sleeper