Dairylink farmer Charles Clarke scanned his cows recently and, here, he reports on how the breeding season went. Charles is milking 110 cows on a mixed soil type farm at Bailieborough in Co Cavan.

The herd is Holstein Friesian and his EBI is €37, with €8 for milk and €14 for fertility.

Charles’s goals over the next few years are to improve herd performance and grow more grass.

Charles Clarke Co Cavan

The herd has an empty rate of 12% this year after 13 weeks of breeding. We focused on the cows not cycling three weeks before breeding by tail-painting the herd early and identifying cows not showing any heat. This worked well and we identified cows that needed intervention. About 20 cows were not cycling and we got them scanned. Some needed wash-outs, while others needed PG or CIDRs.

The six-week calving rate should be 77%. From the 31 heifers served, one is not in calf with breeding starting for cows and heifers on 2 May. Ultimately, my aim for the herd is an empty rate of 8%, with the calving period down to 12 weeks so more must be done on this front.

Fertility management

From a fertility management perspective, the intervention pre breeding worked very well and we will do this again next year. I am thinking of hiring in some additional help next year for the breeding period. Last year, I found myself very busy from 2 May when breeding started. The daily milking and grass management takes up a good bit of time on this farm, so when breeding starts, especially for the first six weeks, the pressure can be really on.

An extra set of hands on the farm, even for six weeks, would allow me to focus more on breeding, while still getting that other critical work done, such as fertiliser sowing, grass measurement and general stock work. A cow drafting gate is also needed to help separate the cows for AI. Currently, tail paint is checked in the parlour and then, if required, cows are manually pulled out as they walk out from the parlour. A simple manual gate which operates from the parlour helps to direct cows to a separate pen where they could be inseminated at the end of milking.

Heifers were synchronised using a fixed-time AI plan, which worked well on the farm. I don’t do any AI myself so this allowed an AI technician to inseminate all the heifers on a particular day. From a cost perspective, it is expensive but it saves a lot of time in heat detection work and shifting heifers back and forward to get inseminated.

Cashflow over dry period

This year will be my second year to close down the parlour over the Christmas period with cows planned to be dry from the middle of December. At this stage, only 12% of the herd are dry. From a cashflow viewpoint, you must plan ahead and have sufficient funds in place to keep the farm ticking along when the milk cheque stops. After all, we still have overheads such as loans, conacre and insurance, etc, and the cows will still need to be fed. Some saving in parlour costs and labour can be accounted for but it is not really significant. The closed period for the parlour is really only a consequence of my production system and calving profile. The calving start date for the herd is 1 February and the herd will be dry by mid-December. So, effectively, from 1 February to 15 December, the herd will have produced approximately 5,500 litres/cow with 500kg/head concentrate going in. The key advantage for me is the downtime this system offers, allowing me to plan ahead for next year.

Farm grass update

Prolonged periods of wet weather have made it difficult on occasion but, generally, the grazing platform has performed very well with an additional 1.2t DM/ha grown on the grazing block over last year. Total growth this year is 12.9tDM/ha, with 33 measurements recorded on the 32ha block. I’m doing my best to maximise growth on the farm.

Yes, weather conditions play a major role in grass growth but soil fertility must be correct, or at least you should attempt to correct it in order to capitalise on the grass growth. Soil analysis under the Dairylink project for the farm revealed significant shortfalls for key nutrients on the farm. For the grazing block, only 14% of the area was optimal for grass growth based on soil pH, phosphorus, and potash.

Looking back at grass measurement information, my grass growth is up on the same period last year. A proportion of this can be attributed to more favourable growing conditions this year, but better soil fertility is also playing a role. Last year, 80t of lime was applied to the grazing block, and we have applied 40t so far this year.

Phosphorus and potash have been the focus this year. To date this year, I have used urea as my nitrogen source behind the cows with 25 units going on each time. From the end of May, I used a compound of 18-6-12 at a rate of 1.5 bags/acre on the grazing platform for one rotation. It was used again on the next rotation before moving back to urea.