The breeding season has gone reasonably smooth so far this spring. We use tail paint for heat detection and draft cows out before milking every morning for service.

With three weeks of AI done, we have only 15 cows or 5% of the herd left to breed. Most of these cows are rough enough over the tail head so are obviously not cycling.

We will handle all of these non-cyclers and check them for cysts, etc, over the next few days and see if they will show a heat after that.

The next option is to maybe give them a shot of estrumate to try to encourage them to show a heat and failing that the bulls will be run with them for a month at the end of the season to try to stimulate them into activity.

Sunshine is probably as good a tonic as anything and let them take their chances after that.

We don’t usually need to use too many hormone treatments to produce heats so it’s not something that we want to get too used to doing. The number of these non-cyclers should be very small by the end of six weeks of AI in any case and if they are empty at the end of the breeding season, then so be it.

Straws

We have used mostly dairy AI straws for the first three weeks of the breeding season with a small amount of beef AI used on the lower-quality cows.

For the repeats, we will continue to use some dairy AI but a higher proportion of beef semen will be used.

We have some easy-calving Hereford and Belgian Blue bulls in the tank to do this job.

When we finish AI we will run three or four bulls with the herd at all times with some squad rotation done to tidy up for the final month of breeding.

We have a Hereford, an Aubrac and a few Friesian bulls as part of this team.

Most of these calves will be sold as soon as possible next spring to keep the workload under control.

We will finish breeding on 25 June this year to hopefully prevent any April calves next year.

The heifers will finish out their first three-week cycle this week with the Friesian bulls.

We will use a mix of dairy and beef bulls with them for another six weeks after that to give them the best possible chance of going in-calf.

They seem to be bulling strongly enough and growing well even after the extended winter period. Hopefully, the results will be good with these girls when we scan them. They have had a lot of disruption close to the breeding season.

Grass growth

Grass growth has really turned the corner and taken off with the heat over the last two weeks. We will start to skip paddocks for silage and wraps next week.

We might let some of the milking platform come in with the first-cut silage and the rest will be baled as it gets too strong for grazing.

Our silage fertiliser is all out for the last few weeks, so the first cut should still come in at the end of May or early June, despite the harsh spring.

The next job to get ticked off the list is some reseeding of paddocks on the heifer ground and maybe a few paddocks on the milking platform.

We will hopefully get these done in the next week or so and the plan is to stagger them to some extent, so that we don’t have too much ground out at once or coming back in at the same stage either for that matter.

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