The grazing season is starting to close in this week. Most of the calves are housed and the end is in sight for the cows as well. We should be able to keep the in-calf heifers out grazing for another couple of weeks, which will take a good bit of pressure off silage stocks and this should help us to get through the winter comfortably with the feed available in the yard. The winter feed budget is improving every day that these animals are out.

The cows have settled in very well to once-a-day milking over the last two weeks. They are getting a mix of silage and beet pulp nuts for two hours after morning milking and then walking out to the paddock for a fresh strip of grass each day and they remain in the field until the following morning’s milking.

If the weather gets much worse, we will put them on the cubicles with silage by night, milk them in the morning and then turn them out for two hours of grazing for as long as the grass lasts. We have about 10% of the milking platform left to graze based on closing the first paddocks in early October.

We may have to go back to one or two of the earlier closed paddocks before we house completely to clean off some high covers depending on overall farm cover.

With the mild weather and later nitrogen application, grass is continuing to move along ahead of target, so we will have another look at this before housing completely.

We will start to dry off batches of cows from this week, as we get within eight weeks of calving. Condition score is holding up very well in the main herd so it will be short rations with these girls once they are dried off and a lot of straw in the diet for the first few weeks of the dry period at least. We should be fully dry by the middle of December with a bit of downtime to catch up on a few extra jobs around the yard.

The heifer calves will be divided up for the winter based on size and weight and fed either 2kg or 3kg of meal depending on how much ground they need to make up over the winter and to help to stretch their silage out until the spring.

We have a few extra younger calves kept this time so these may need a bit extra to get them up to target.

Dairy Day

We had a very worthwhile day at the Irish Farmers Journal Dairy Day this week. The weather was terrible outside the venue in Punchestown, but it was very relaxed and enjoyable inside the building. A good crowd turned up to visit an increased number of trade stands and it was a good opportunity to catch up with people from all over the country in a focused and targeted environment to discuss all aspects of the industry.

The breakout sessions on calf health and the skills hub drew in large crowds for each presentation with a lot of younger people in attendance but there was something for everyone with the Beyond the Milking Parlour talks well-attended as well.

The format seemed to work well with a roving mic allowing the audience to ask questions or to participate in the discussion.

Hopefully some of these videos will appear on the Irish Farmers Journal website over the coming weeks as they would be a useful resource. It takes a lot of hard work and effort to get an event like this off the ground, so well done to all involved and hopefully it continues to grow and develop over the next few years.