Animal health: The best way to spot a sick cow is to look for one that isn’t eating straight after milking. If a cow goes back to the field or to the shed and lies down, there’s something wrong. Cows not eating meal in the parlour is another sign of problems. Stomach upsets and displaced abomasums or ketosis are likely culprits. Watch for these closely over the next few weeks. At a farm walk in Cavan last week, rumen fluke was identified as a problem in young cows, where it was never a problem before. If cows are off-form, particularly younger cows, don’t rule out parasites as a contributory factor. Take dung samples from a representative sample of the herd and get these tested.

Feed: With the decline in the weather, many cows have had to be housed. The weather forecast predicts a continuation of the unsettled weather over the long weekend, but it’s looking better for the end of next week. If silage is being fed, feed the best that is available to minimise the impact on performance and body condition score. Remember, grass is the best feed, everything else is lower in energy and protein than spring grass.

When buying meal, a protein content of 12% to 14% is more than sufficient where cows are out on grass 90% of the time. If cows are in by night, a 16% protein content will be needed and where they are housed full-time an 18% to 20% nut will be needed, but even in this case the silage quality would want to be very good to prevent excessive condition score loss and production losses.

The price of feedstuffs on the world market has come down considerably over the last six months, yet this price drop hasn’t been reflected in the prices paid by farmers for rations. I can understand that some merchants forward bought their ingredients at higher prices, but if you’re doing deals for future orders you should be seeing a reduction in prices.

Body condition score: Act now to avoid excessive body condition score (BCS) loss in the runup to mating. Breeding will start on most farms within the next six weeks. We know that cows that lose more than 0.5 of a BCS between calving and breeding will have reduced conception rates. Rub your hand over the cow’s ribs, short ribs and tail head.

The best treatment for low BCS is to get as much grass into cows as possible, as this is the highest energy feed available at over one ufl and it is also the cheapest. Then pick out the highest risk cows and put them on once-a-day milking. The highest risk cows are those at 2.75 and going to 2.5. These cows are under pressure. Milking them once a day will reduce their energy demand, which is effectively the same thing as giving them more energy. The easiest thing to do is to put tail tape around their tail and not milk them in the evening. It’s correct to say that they will milk less now, but the chances are these cows won’t milk at all next year if they are left alone. You will sacrifice a small bit of milk now for better fertility and way more milk next year.