Winter preparation

The cold nights have ushered in the real start to winter and animals will begin to be housed over the coming weeks. Take the time to check that water troughs, automatic scrapers and all doors and gates are operating properly. People who fix scrapers are busy these days installing new parlours so give them plenty of notice.

It’s a good idea to get silage tested. It’s as much about knowing the dry matter as the dry matter digestibility (DMD). There’s more energy and feed value in a grab of good quality and high dry matter silage than low dry matter and low DMD silage. This means a grab of good silage will feed more animals. This is important to know when silage is scarce. If you know the dry matter and quality, you can work out how many grabs of silage to feed a pen of cows.

When sampling an unopened pit of silage, you need to use a silage core. Sample from the top of the pit in a W pattern, like you would when soil-sampling. Put the contents from the corer into a bucket. When finished, mix the contents of the bucket together. Pour on to a clean surface and mix again. Separate the sample into four pieces and put a small sample from each piece into a sealable bag. Remove air from the bag, seal it and post it to a laboratory early in the week so sampling will be done quickly.

Roadways

There’s a lot of construction work happening on dairy farms at present with new parlours and cubicle sheds being built. It’s a good chance to get groundwork done when the weather is dry as extra stone would be used if the ground was wet. A lot of farmers are building new roads and carrying out maintenance on existing roadways. The key thing is to get the camber right so that water flows off. If water lodges on the road, no matter what the surface is, it’ll be a disaster.

It’s no surprise that lameness is less of an issue this autumn because road surfaces are dry. I don’t think it makes a whole lot of difference whether the camber is going one way or both ways, unless the road is very wide where a camber both ways is more practical.

When picking a surface material, make sure you use a stone that’s “soft” on cows’ feet. Limestone should not be used as it never wears or breaks down, and even if it does break it’ll always leave a jagged surface. Brown shale or slig is the product of choice. This can be bought crushed for the surface dressing. But the most important thing is to know what part of the quarry it’s coming from. Freshly extracted stone from the bottom of the quarry will be harder and slow to break down.

Use a vibrating roller and water or slurry to bed the road in. Some farmers use lime fines for the surface and this is OK, but must be applied thinly.

Deaths

I’m still hearing reports of mortality in cows out grazing. In most cases it’s either bloat, grass tetany or nitrates poisoning. Some farms are more prone than others. Use 12-hour breaks and alternate between lush and heavy covers if necessary.