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LIC Ireland and Eurogene AI held a series of meetings and farm walks across the country last week. Even though the main topic was preparing for the breeding season, a lot of discussion was on weather and feed issues.
The Mayo meeting was held on Sean O’Donnell’s farm outside Ballina last Thursday. Sean is milking 205 cows across two milking platforms. He leased a farm last year, built a milking parlour on it and is now milking in the two places. Cows were out grazing on both farms on the day of the farm walk, despite the wintry conditions.
The issues in Mayo seem no different to anywhere else. Grass growth is low. Farmers in the crowd were holding cows back, either giving them silage at night, or silage by day. Most of the farmers in attendance were feeding between 5kg and 8kg of meal.
Silage is scarce and the quality of what is available is only moderate on many farms. One of the farmers, whose cows are out by day and in by night, said the cows are barely eating any silage at night;
“Even though there’s loads of silage in front of them, they queue up at the gate for half the night waiting to go out. They’d much prefer to be out,” he said.
Sean is feeding 4kg of meal on both farms. Average farm cover on the home farm is 500kg and the farm is growing 8kg per day. To reduce demand, he has the cows housed at night. There is more grass on the leased farm and the land is drier, so cows are out day and night there.
Sean condition scoring cows.
Sean condition-scoring cows.
His plan is to stretch out the first round until 16 April by keeping them in at night. He reckons he will have enough silage to get him to that date, but he says the quality of the silage is poor and would be better suited to dry cow feed than milking cow feed.
“We normally start the second round on 10 April. Last year we started it on 3 April but it was too soon and I ended up chasing my tail until mid-May. We have eight paddocks left to graze and it’s a case of rationing them out until growth changes. Four of these have covers of above 1,000. The last paddocks to be closed only have covers of 500kg, they haven’t moved all winter,” Sean said.
After two weeks of once a day, the cow will flick to a positive energy balance, which will make a good difference
He spread 46 units/acre of urea two weeks ago, and plans to go with another round of urea next week. Despite the upset to the normal routine, Sean’s cows are milking well. It’s nearly all mature cows on the home farm and they are milking 25.5l at 4.80% fat and 3.32% protein or 2.13kg MS/cow. All the heifers are on the outfarm and they are milking 20l at 4.66% fat and 3.54% protein or 1.65kg MS/cow.
Joyce Voogt and Sean O'Donnell at the LIC farm walk in Mayo
Joyce Voogt and Sean O'Donnell.
The main speaker at the walk was Joyce Voogt, a vet who works for LIC in New Zealand. Joyce emphasised the importance of body condition score in the run-up to the breeding season. She said once a day milking is a good way to improve the energy balance in cows.
“After two weeks of once a day, the cow will flick to a positive energy balance, which will make a good difference. After four to six weeks you should see big changes in condition score and the benefit will come in increased submission and conception rates. The key thing is to act as soon as you can. Any cow not bulling, lame or in low BCS should be put on once a day as soon as possible,” Joyce said.
Cork meeting
The situation is much the same in west Cork. Low grass growth, fodder scarcity and difficult grazing conditions dominated the discussion at Tim Crowley’s open day. Tim farms in partnership with his parents Dan and Helen near Bandon. He won the young farmer category in the 2017 grassland farmer of the year competition.
They are milking 145 cows on 82ha (49ha owned, 33ha leased) the milking platform consists of 59ha. The long-term goal is to milk 180 cows but they may consider contract-rearing heifers if they want to push this further.
Average grass growth on Crowley’s farm for 2017 was an impressive 15.2t/ha. There is a relatively tight range in what the paddocks are growing, with the highest returning 17.5t/ha and the lowest at 13t/ha. Tim achieved an average of 8.5 grazings per paddock along with one silage cut last year.
Grainne Hurley and Tim Crowley at the farm walk on Tim's farm
Grainne Hurley and Tim Crowley at the farm walk on Tim's farm.
Delaying the start of the second round was the key message from local Teagasc adviser Grainne Hurley: “You don’t want the average farm cover to drop below 500kg and if this does happen then move the first rotation out to 15 April for those with drier farms or 20 April for farms on heavier soils,” Grainne said.
With day length increasing, she urged farmers to get nitrogen out to boost grass growth. She suggested that if the weather remains difficult and extra silage can’t be sourced, then farmers should sell excess stock or look to move heifers off the milking platform.
Apart from the week of the snow, cows on the Crowley farm have got out by day since they started grazing on 8 February.
By the end of March, Tim had 68% of the farm grazed and it has received 70 units of nitrogen and slurry so far. He did a grass walk before the event which showed he had an average farm cover of 602kg/ha. Growth was low at 6kg/day. On the back of this, a decision was made to increase ration from 4kg to 6kg per cow and push the start of the second rotation out to 15 April.
In the event that conditions don’t improve, the plan is to re-house the heaviest of the replacement heifers.
Dan and Tim Crowley, Careys Cross, Bandon, Co. Cork
Dan and Tim Crowley.
This spring is a stark contrast to 2017. The Crowleys grew 1.2t/ha to the end of March last year but only 0.5t/ha has been grown so far this year.
The herd is milking 24.5l at 4.28% fat and 3.17% protein.
Tim says he learned a lot about grass while on work experience in New Zealand: “I was working for a Roscommon man, Trevor Monson. He let me grass measure on a weekly basis and do the grass budgets and allocations and I learned a lot from that. I went back out there in 2010 for the calving and breeding season and learned how to keep grass in the diet.”
When he returned home there was drainage and reclamation work to be done and extra land was taken on.
“With that came a lot of reseeding. We did 10% to 12% of the farm every year. We saw better cow performance and health on the back of this. I started grass measuring in 2014, on a weekly basis through my discussion group.”
While this land is exceptionally good, some of it was in forestry, so soil fertility is low. Tim had hoped to spread a bag of muriate of Potash last autumn but weather conditions prevented it. By focusing on improving the soil fertility on the farm, he feels he can grow an extra tonne/ha of grass.
The grazing infrastructure consists of 4.5m wide roadways, 220 gallon water troughs and 1.25in water pipes. Tim set up smaller spur roadways to reduce damage when grazing this spring
LIC Ireland and Eurogene AI held a series of meetings and farm walks across the country last week. Even though the main topic was preparing for the breeding season, a lot of discussion was on weather and feed issues.
The Mayo meeting was held on Sean O’Donnell’s farm outside Ballina last Thursday. Sean is milking 205 cows across two milking platforms. He leased a farm last year, built a milking parlour on it and is now milking in the two places. Cows were out grazing on both farms on the day of the farm walk, despite the wintry conditions.
The issues in Mayo seem no different to anywhere else. Grass growth is low. Farmers in the crowd were holding cows back, either giving them silage at night, or silage by day. Most of the farmers in attendance were feeding between 5kg and 8kg of meal.
Silage is scarce and the quality of what is available is only moderate on many farms. One of the farmers, whose cows are out by day and in by night, said the cows are barely eating any silage at night;
“Even though there’s loads of silage in front of them, they queue up at the gate for half the night waiting to go out. They’d much prefer to be out,” he said.
Sean is feeding 4kg of meal on both farms. Average farm cover on the home farm is 500kg and the farm is growing 8kg per day. To reduce demand, he has the cows housed at night. There is more grass on the leased farm and the land is drier, so cows are out day and night there.
Sean condition scoring cows.
Sean condition-scoring cows.
His plan is to stretch out the first round until 16 April by keeping them in at night. He reckons he will have enough silage to get him to that date, but he says the quality of the silage is poor and would be better suited to dry cow feed than milking cow feed.
“We normally start the second round on 10 April. Last year we started it on 3 April but it was too soon and I ended up chasing my tail until mid-May. We have eight paddocks left to graze and it’s a case of rationing them out until growth changes. Four of these have covers of above 1,000. The last paddocks to be closed only have covers of 500kg, they haven’t moved all winter,” Sean said.
After two weeks of once a day, the cow will flick to a positive energy balance, which will make a good difference
He spread 46 units/acre of urea two weeks ago, and plans to go with another round of urea next week. Despite the upset to the normal routine, Sean’s cows are milking well. It’s nearly all mature cows on the home farm and they are milking 25.5l at 4.80% fat and 3.32% protein or 2.13kg MS/cow. All the heifers are on the outfarm and they are milking 20l at 4.66% fat and 3.54% protein or 1.65kg MS/cow.
Joyce Voogt and Sean O'Donnell at the LIC farm walk in Mayo
Joyce Voogt and Sean O'Donnell.
The main speaker at the walk was Joyce Voogt, a vet who works for LIC in New Zealand. Joyce emphasised the importance of body condition score in the run-up to the breeding season. She said once a day milking is a good way to improve the energy balance in cows.
“After two weeks of once a day, the cow will flick to a positive energy balance, which will make a good difference. After four to six weeks you should see big changes in condition score and the benefit will come in increased submission and conception rates. The key thing is to act as soon as you can. Any cow not bulling, lame or in low BCS should be put on once a day as soon as possible,” Joyce said.
Cork meeting
The situation is much the same in west Cork. Low grass growth, fodder scarcity and difficult grazing conditions dominated the discussion at Tim Crowley’s open day. Tim farms in partnership with his parents Dan and Helen near Bandon. He won the young farmer category in the 2017 grassland farmer of the year competition.
They are milking 145 cows on 82ha (49ha owned, 33ha leased) the milking platform consists of 59ha. The long-term goal is to milk 180 cows but they may consider contract-rearing heifers if they want to push this further.
Average grass growth on Crowley’s farm for 2017 was an impressive 15.2t/ha. There is a relatively tight range in what the paddocks are growing, with the highest returning 17.5t/ha and the lowest at 13t/ha. Tim achieved an average of 8.5 grazings per paddock along with one silage cut last year.
Grainne Hurley and Tim Crowley at the farm walk on Tim's farm
Grainne Hurley and Tim Crowley at the farm walk on Tim's farm.
Delaying the start of the second round was the key message from local Teagasc adviser Grainne Hurley: “You don’t want the average farm cover to drop below 500kg and if this does happen then move the first rotation out to 15 April for those with drier farms or 20 April for farms on heavier soils,” Grainne said.
With day length increasing, she urged farmers to get nitrogen out to boost grass growth. She suggested that if the weather remains difficult and extra silage can’t be sourced, then farmers should sell excess stock or look to move heifers off the milking platform.
Apart from the week of the snow, cows on the Crowley farm have got out by day since they started grazing on 8 February.
By the end of March, Tim had 68% of the farm grazed and it has received 70 units of nitrogen and slurry so far. He did a grass walk before the event which showed he had an average farm cover of 602kg/ha. Growth was low at 6kg/day. On the back of this, a decision was made to increase ration from 4kg to 6kg per cow and push the start of the second rotation out to 15 April.
In the event that conditions don’t improve, the plan is to re-house the heaviest of the replacement heifers.
Dan and Tim Crowley, Careys Cross, Bandon, Co. Cork
Dan and Tim Crowley.
This spring is a stark contrast to 2017. The Crowleys grew 1.2t/ha to the end of March last year but only 0.5t/ha has been grown so far this year.
The herd is milking 24.5l at 4.28% fat and 3.17% protein.
Tim says he learned a lot about grass while on work experience in New Zealand: “I was working for a Roscommon man, Trevor Monson. He let me grass measure on a weekly basis and do the grass budgets and allocations and I learned a lot from that. I went back out there in 2010 for the calving and breeding season and learned how to keep grass in the diet.”
When he returned home there was drainage and reclamation work to be done and extra land was taken on.
“With that came a lot of reseeding. We did 10% to 12% of the farm every year. We saw better cow performance and health on the back of this. I started grass measuring in 2014, on a weekly basis through my discussion group.”
While this land is exceptionally good, some of it was in forestry, so soil fertility is low. Tim had hoped to spread a bag of muriate of Potash last autumn but weather conditions prevented it. By focusing on improving the soil fertility on the farm, he feels he can grow an extra tonne/ha of grass.
The grazing infrastructure consists of 4.5m wide roadways, 220 gallon water troughs and 1.25in water pipes. Tim set up smaller spur roadways to reduce damage when grazing this spring
This week's Beef Management takes a look at timing of AI and stock bull fertility and ANC stocking rate requirements.
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