As we are now into November, thoughts will be turning to drying off cows. There are 12 weeks between now and 1 February and 12 weeks is the optimum dry period for first lactation cows.

Best policy is to look through breeding records and pick out first lactation cows that are due to calve in February and put these on the list for drying off later this week.

The primary benefit of this is to the cow. As they are young cows they are still growing and will continue to grow in size up to next year.

These young cows will be the ones under most pressure within a herd so giving them a long dry period will allow them to recover from their first lactation and prepare for their next, vis a vis building up body condition score.

Ancillary benefits

There are ancillary benefits for the rest of the herd because these younger animals are usually the lowest yielders so it doesn’t make sense to be feeding them grass or high quality silage and meal. By drying them off you are leaving more feed available to the higher yielding cows.

This will help the lactose percentage in the milk also. It should not drop below 4.3% and if it is close to this drying off the low yielders will help to bring it up.

Other animals that should be considered for early dry off include any lame, thin or low yielding cows. Lame cows should be hoof-pared to cure the cause of the lameness and a long dry period will help them to regain any lost body condition score.

Hygiene after drying off is critical to prevent new infections from developing. In an ideal world, recently dried off cows would be kept outside in a bare paddock until their udders involute but that is not very practical after all the rain of the last few days.

If housed on cubicles, keep the beds cleaned down and disinfect with lime or equivalent.