Weather

Heavy rain and wind this week brought winter housing closer for many farmers. Many herds had to be housed for periods. More heavy rain is forecast for early next week. Spur roadways are useful for getting to the backs of paddocks. These can be either permanent – 1m wide stone track – or temporary. On drier land, the temporary track is probably sufficient, but on heavier soils a permanent track is worthwhile as it will be needed more often. Slip into lighter covers during wet weather – 1,300kg DM/ha to 1,500kgDM/ha is easier to graze in wet weather than 2,000kgDM/ha.

Decisions around housing depend on average farm cover. The average cover on PastureBase is 774kg/ha – this is too low for the time of year and represents a missed opportunity to get cheap feed this autumn and have good grass next spring. What distracted farmers from building up covers in late August and September? In many cases there was too much “surplus” taken out when the weather was good in September. Take note and learn lessons for next year. If you have to house in October for grass rather than weather reasons it’s a missed opportunity to produce cheap milk.

Winter milk

There is a focus on winter milk on pages 48 to 51. Teagasc specialist James Dunne goes through the important factors for formulating a diet for winter milk herds. It’s important that farmers have oversight and ownership of their rations. All too often the nutritionist, who is sometimes also the feed rep, has too much say. A forage analysis is critical as forage should be the mainstay of the diet.

The other thing he says is to match the diet to the feed needs of most cows in the herd. The highest-yielding cows in the herd may be yielding over 35kg/day, but in his example only 9% of the cows were actually yielding this, with the average at 27kg/day. It would be grossly uneconomical to feed the whole herd enough to produce 35kg/day. The key thing is to get silage sampled and feed the best-quality silage to the cows that need it most – those at peak milk production.

Minerals

In terms of spec, the key differences in dry cow minerals is the inclusion rates of magnesium, phosphorus and vitamins such as A and E along with the percentage of ‘protected’ ingredients such as copper and zinc. To work out feeding rates, look at the inclusion rates on the label. There are 1,000mg in a gram and 1,000g in a kilo. Most farmers will feed 120g/day of minerals per cow, eight weeks pre-calving.

The dry cow requires between 20g and 25g of magnesium per day before calving. If the label says there is 20% magnesium in the mineral mix and you are feeding 120g per day, then cows are getting 24g of magnesium per day. Most cows need around 4g/day of phosphorus before calving. For iodine, cows require about 60 to 70mg per day. For selenium, the target is for 5 or 6mg per day pre-calving. If it says there is 50mg on the label and if 120g per day is fed then the cows will be consuming 6mg per day (50mg divided by 1,000 and multiplied by 120g).