On Friday, the main milking herd was grazing right beside the M9 motorway going into grass covers of 2,000kg plus (6in to 8in of grass) but they were grazing them right down.

While it was spitting rain, grazing conditions were almost perfect.

The land around that part of the farm is as dry as it comes. David was making the point that during the week he was probably feeding them too much silage at night, along with the 5kg of meal per cow they are getting in the parlour.

It's difficult to balance good clean-out during day-grazing while feeding silage at night.

On Thursday night, David and Niall divided out seven round bales of silage. Assuming 180kg of dry matter in a bale, that allocates between 5 to 6kg of dry matter per cow.

That and 5kg of meal would be getting close to two-thirds of the total daily intake required.

Grazing

David said he could have another 10 days grazing ahead of him depending on weather conditions, etc. There is 7ha left to graze. Grass growth for November has been excellent, with over 4in of rain in November alone.

There are about 53 cows dry now and they are cleaning up some paddocks that were not grazed off properly.

The new feeders on the parlour are up and running. They are the manual batch, pig feeder type so there is a handle to pull that feeds the first two cows, then another one that feeds four cows and then four more handles that feed six cows at a time.

Milk test

The last milk test (21 November) shows a result of about 1.45kg of milk solids per cow (14.3kg per cow at 4.32% protein, down from 4.48%, 5.56% fat up from 5.31%). The latest cell count is at 108 SCC, 16 TBC and 4.66% lactose.

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February feed accumulating in Kilkenny