This is a subscriber-only article
The farm has been very busy over the last couple of weeks as calving kicks off properly and the last few jobs are tidied up before the real pressure comes on.
We have 60 cows calved at this stage, with a great run of heifer calves at the start and, even more importantly, all of the calves have arrived healthy and well.
Every calf that arrives is a step closer to a run of bulls or a stillbirth but so far, so good, and we’ll enjoy the good fortune while it lasts.
With all of the rainfall lately we haven’t managed to get the cows out to grass yet but the forecast is beginning to look a little bit better over the next few days so hopefully we can get out even for a few hours before the weekend.
There is plenty of grass out there, so if conditions start to dry up enough we will try to get into some sort of a grazing routine on some of the drier fields next week. It can’t keep raining forever, even in Ireland, so hopefully a long overdue dry spell arrives soon.
The numbers of cows milking will climb rapidly over the next few weeks, so every day out at grass will be a huge help to the workload and cow health.
We will separate out the group of fresh calvers and problem cows from the cows going to the tank this week and run in a separate group both outside and inside to make things a bit easier at milking time.
We will start to think about fertiliser and slurry over the next few days as well.
There is a good cover of grass on the farm which carried over through the winter very well so there is no huge pressure on us to get fertiliser out early. We will wait for a few more dry days rather than risk doing excessive damage while spreading.
The slurry will also hold for another couple of weeks if necessary, so we might try to get an area grazed off first before getting the umbilical system in to spread for a couple of days.
We received a couple of letters lately informing us of increased charges from our farm service providers, including ICBF, and our milk recording organisation, Progressive Genetics.
Costs very rarely go down in farming but the scale of some of these hikes is significant and especially the Herdplus subscription with ICBF.
The letter informing us of these changes told us more about what the organisation has done for us over the last few years rather than what they needed this extra funding for or what extra service they planned to deliver with it.
We get excellent dairy management reports from this subscription service and there is a new mobile app now which will make it more user-friendly in future.
Technology
Hopefully, the whole service provided by this organisation will move forward with whatever technology becomes available in the future and the ICBF will continue to serve farmers well.
In my opinion, the jury is still out a bit on genomics and some aspects of the EBI system, but hopefully a well-funded organisation can iron out these issues in time.
Lastly, we sent some fodder to Co Cavan this week from our local IFA branches as part of the fodder crisis initiative. We had a great effort made by farmers locally to donate bales of silage, hay and straw.
We should get over 100 bales away by the end of this week and hopefully it does some good for farmers in a tough situation further north.
SHARING OPTIONS: