Grass is pretty much non-existent here in Abbeyleix, so we have had to bite the bullet and go hard on feeding. The cows are now getting 9kg of an 18% nut in the parlour, with a rumen buffer included, and the rest of the diet is silage. We are feeding six bales a day at the moment. Thankfully, the cows are still milking well, considering the conditions. The last collection had them at around 20l, with butterfat at a very good 5.65% and protein at 3.99%.

We sat down and did a feed budget and, on paper, we are okay for silage. However, if we have to keep feeding at this level right through to the end of the month, we will end up with a deficit. We will have enough silage to get through the winter, but the problem could come next spring.

If we continue using the quality bales at the rate we are now, we could have the good bales gone within two months. Those bales were really put away with next spring in mind. I don’t want to use them all now and then be caught for silage next March or April. My plan at this stage is to buy in some hay or silage to take some of the pressure off during the winter, allowing us to hold onto the better-quality bales and pit silage. The pit silage hasn’t been tested yet, so I don’t know exactly what we are dealing with. I know it won’t be as good as the quality bales, but needs must. With the situation we are in, we have to make the best of what we have.

We did a milk recording a few weeks ago and six cows came back with somatic cell counts over 700,000, so we treated those. One of them got an antibiotic tube as she actually had a touch of mastitis. The other five got garlic tubes. Two of the six were repeat offenders, while the others were cows that had never been over 100,000 so far this year. We will CMT them again in a week or two and see how they are responding.

Thankfully, the cows bulling have remained fairly quiet over the last few weeks. We have already picked up 14 cows empty through the collars, which is disappointing. That is 13% of the current cow numbers. There are also three cows that I didn’t breed at all, so hopefully that will be the end of the bad news. If we can get away with no more empties, we should be able to get back up around the 120-cow mark.

Our new full-time staff member, Jennifer, started a few weeks ago and she has been busy getting up to speed with everything here. Herself and our summer milker, Clodagh, got a good few jobs done last week. Clodagh has now finished up and is heading back to college, so we are sorry to see her go, but hopefully she will get a good break before college starts again. The two of them got the cows vaccinated for IBR, put on pour-on for flies and trimmed the tails. We also got the liners changed in the parlour, which was another job ticked off the list.

We also hired in a digger while Klara’s brother Joe was down with us, having come home from Australia. We had a few small jobs to get done, but we also took the opportunity to put in a new roadway on one of the outblocks. It should make life a lot easier, particularly when we are cutting silage or spreading slurry, as we won’t have to drive across the field every time we want to get in and out.

We also laid some new astro turf. I’m hoping this lot lasts a bit longer than the previous job. The last astro turf didn’t even make two years before it all started moving down towards the low side of the roadway. I found out afterwards that it wasn’t thick enough. Other people who had put down astro turf hadn’t had the same problem, so as usual it seemed I was the one that managed to find the exception. There is always something to learn on a farm.