Thankfully, we have less than 10 cows left to calve between now and mid-April.

Fewer cows to calve means less bother. For some reason, March always seems to be a difficult month around here, with this March being no exception. This comes after having had the most trouble-free winter we have had in a long time.

At the time of writing we have had two twisted calf beds this month, resulting in two caesareans, one death and one cull. As if that wasn’t enough, on Mother’s Day morning, a cow was stuck in a cubicle. This was something I could have done without since I was “volunteered” by my daughters for “breakfast in bed duty” that morning.

The first cow with a twisted calf bed wasn’t making much progress, and after putting my hand in to see what was happening I decided the vet was needed.

Unfortunately, my fears were correct, and the vet confirmed that it was a 360-degree twist. Eventually, with enough to do, he got it untwisted only to find that the calf would need to come out the side.

By this point, just to complicate matters, the cow decided to lie down and refused to get up. When we finally got the calf out, it was the biggest Hereford bull calf I have ever seen.

After a week, the milk hadn’t come to the cow, so rather than fill a cubicle with a passenger she has been dry cow-tubed and hopefully will be fattened for beef.

Shock

The second cow was two weeks off calving when she got a twist (the vet says it can happen from seven months into pregnancy). Again, the calf had to come out the side but this time the cow went into shock afterwards and died.

These things always seem to happen in threes. The cow that was stuck in the cubicle wasn’t able to get up and has also gone to the great milking parlour in the sky.

It is a small consolation that these were all older cows that were due to go on to the transfer list after taking the flush of milk from them this year. I suppose, one benefit of our system is that if a cow goes wrong we have plenty of heifers to come into the herd, but it leaves us with fewer heifers to sell, but at least we are self-sufficient and can maintain numbers.

Yield

Cows have been milking really well this winter, averaging just over 36 litres per head per day at the beginning of the month.

However, a few weeks ago, I noticed that dung had become quite loose and developed into scour in some cows, resulting in a loss of appetite and inevitably a drop in milk.

To get through this, I reduced the level of meal in the wagon and increased the level of wholecrop for a few days to tighten things up. This seems to have worked and both appetite and production have returned to where they were.

Solids are currently holding up well with the latest test being 4.17% butterfat and 3.41% protein (2.82kg/solids/cow). But at 0.43kg/l, it would be fair to say that feed rate is on the high side, although there is an element of forage saving in the feed plan, and with milk price reasonable up to now it has made economic sense. Where we go with feed rate from here on in will be dictated by both milk and feed price.

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Despite the rain, the borehole is running dry