Calving has slowed down considerably and, in the last two weeks, calving rate has slowed to 25 calvings per week, on average. At this stage, 245 of the planned 320 cows to milk have calved (Table 1).

All calved cows are at grass full time but, for the next 10 days, they will be on a diet of 5kg to 6kg high quality bale silage, 5kg of meal and 5kg to 6kg of grazed grass.

The intention is to slow down the rotation and stay within target set out in the spring rotation planner. Farm cover fell from 540kg to 410kg in one week (130kg drop) as cold winds swept the farm and frost at night limited growth to 5kg/day, on average, for the last week.

Approximately 50% of the farm has been grazed or a total of 55ha from the 113ha available for grazing in the first round. The recovery on the first paddocks grazed is next to nothing with a cover of 200kg on the very first paddocks grazed in early February.

The whole farm got a bag of urea per acre on 18 February, so nitrogen won’t be limiting growth when soil temperatures rise. In the last two weeks, soil temperatures rarely exceeded 4oC to 5oC.

The upside of the cold and dry weather is that cows are cleaning out paddocks very well and there is little or no damage to paddocks.

The herd are in two groups — 220 cows in the main milking herd and 25 freshly calved and lame cows grazing paddocks near the parlour.

The dry cows are still on the stand off pad and they don’t have access to silage during the day, so they are eating at night and calving during the day.

The first milk recording took place on Tuesday this week. It’s an early season recording to get a handle on any cows that may have cell count issues. Bulk SCC count is 110,000 cells/ml at the moment. The latest test results from the co-op were 3.56% protein and 5.05% fat with the herd milking between 18 and 20 litres per day.

Over 80 bull calves have been sold from the farm averaging close to €45 each. They are mostly Jersey cross Friesian bull calves. Almost 80 heifer calves are gone to the contract rearing farm also, so there are approximately 80 calves still on the farm. They are getting five litres of whole milk per day in two feeds morning and evening.