John Mannion and Eoin Finneran at evening milking at Greenfield Dairy Farm in Kilkenny. \Ramona Farrelly
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For the last week the cows have been held off the paddocks a good bit and instead milked from the roofless cubicles on a diet of grass silage and meal. The farm recorded almost 20mm of rain on Wednesday and Thursday.
The impact of no grass in the diet is no more apparent than in the bulk tank. Protein is back, fat is back and milk volume is down. All this is happening with a lot more purchased supplement in the diet because a diet of silage and meal simply can’t match the nutrients in grazed grass.
Milk fat percentage for the last 10 days has averaged about 4.81% and protein 3.30%. For the same time frame last year (2017), the fat averaged about 4.87% and protein about 3.49%. Cows are on 4kg of meal, grass silage and grazed grass every second day at the moment.
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One of the big challenges on time and resources at this time of the year is the task of keeping paperwork up to speed. There are so many jobs in the farmyard it can often be very difficult to keep the discipline of sitting down in the office and getting calves registered and BVD samples sent away. If the blue cards are not back and the BVD sample results not back then very soon the calf shed can be full to overflowing.
This week on Tuesday (before the rain Thursday and Friday), a bag of urea per acre was spread across the farm.
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For the last week the cows have been held off the paddocks a good bit and instead milked from the roofless cubicles on a diet of grass silage and meal. The farm recorded almost 20mm of rain on Wednesday and Thursday.
The impact of no grass in the diet is no more apparent than in the bulk tank. Protein is back, fat is back and milk volume is down. All this is happening with a lot more purchased supplement in the diet because a diet of silage and meal simply can’t match the nutrients in grazed grass.
Milk fat percentage for the last 10 days has averaged about 4.81% and protein 3.30%. For the same time frame last year (2017), the fat averaged about 4.87% and protein about 3.49%. Cows are on 4kg of meal, grass silage and grazed grass every second day at the moment.
One of the big challenges on time and resources at this time of the year is the task of keeping paperwork up to speed. There are so many jobs in the farmyard it can often be very difficult to keep the discipline of sitting down in the office and getting calves registered and BVD samples sent away. If the blue cards are not back and the BVD sample results not back then very soon the calf shed can be full to overflowing.
This week on Tuesday (before the rain Thursday and Friday), a bag of urea per acre was spread across the farm.
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