Farmer Writes: disappointing empty rates

We dried off the last of the cows on Monday and started into digging the new collecting yard tank on Tuesday. The builder is here this week and hopefully it will all be poured by the weekend.

It is giving a good dry week so that will be a big help. It was dug out for the storm last weekend and the sides never moved, so there should be no issues.

Cows were averaging between 12 litres and 14 litres per day and protein had dipped when they went indoors full-time. The last butterfat was 5.52% with protein at 4.27% and somatic cell count at 122,000.

According to the Tirlán milk solids tracker, we have finished up with 515kg MS/cow at 3.83% protein and 4.86% butterfat. This is with drying off three weeks earlier than usual because of the tank, which would have cost us a bit, but we are back anyway which is disappointing.

Hopefully next year will be a better year for grass quality and we will have kinder weather when the cows are approaching peak. On PastureBase our average annual tonnage for 2024 is 13t DM/ha. This is actually higher than last year, which was 12.8t, so it wasn’t as bad a year for grass growth as it seemed. And if some of the fertiliser we spread actually worked, we would have had a nice bit more grass.

Our closing average farm cover (AFC) finished up at 1,066kg DM/ha. Some would say that’s too high, but we never have a problem getting through grass in the spring and actually, we never didn’t get it all grazed.

We nearly always get tight at the end of March/early April.

We only got around to doing the final cover this week and I was surprised that it was this high, I could have grazed another paddock in hindsight, but I would rather have an extra paddock to graze in the spring than one less because who knows what the spring will be like. We should be in a position to not have to hold back cows from grass in the spring at all.

There was one paddock near the yard I was keeping for the cows in early spring also, but Klara’s sheep got priority and they are grazing it at the minute, but they will be in before Christmas.

They are less work outside though, and we are back fencing it so there will probably still be enough of a cover on it to let out the first calvers in February.

We also got our new machinery shed finished off last week, so it’s nice to have that done and it will create more room in the other machinery shed, which doubles up as the calf shed in the spring.

The shed only took eight days to do, from pouring the pads to the last bit of sheeting. It was nice to be at something different for a few days, when we were not too busy and there was no field work going on.

Scanning

We scanned the heifers last week and, as I had feared, it showed up six empty out of 34, which is very disappointing, but nothing can be done about it now.

It seems to have been an extra hard year on heifers as I hear empty rates are a lot higher than normal on most farms. These will be fattened now and on a positive note, they should make good money, as the price in the factories is good and rising.

We sent one cow to the factory straight out of the parlour and she made €1,323 as a P+3+.

I think that’s a good price out of the parlour and the other 13 culls should come into good money in a few months, on 75 DMD silage 5kg to 6kg of nuts.

We got paid our 60% TAMS grant for the solar panels last week. I found this application ran smoothly with no real delays when it was actually looked at.

We had our annual TB test two weeks ago and we are all clear thankfully. It is a nerve-racking test for all farmers and there is a great relief when it’s clear, considering how rampant TB is across the country.