The first of the drying-off will take place this coming week when thin heifers and any cows with problems calving down in February will be dried off.

The routine treatment will be dry cow tubes and teat sealers.

The decision of how many to dry will be a combination of cows less than 2.75 BCS, lame cows, cows yielding small volumes and any high-cell-count cows that are recurring.

In total, David expects to dry off about 27 to 30 cows in this first batch. Another batch will be dried off around the end of November.

Meal

The cows are on 5kg of meal. The last delivery arrived 8 November (Gain Performance 18% nut) delivered in bulk (20.1t) and retail price is €318/t delivered.

On 1 November, 10t (Gain 16% protein nuts) were delivered at €300/t retail. This week, the grass growth rate lifted to 22kg per day down up from the 6kg per day the previous week.

The last milk test (7 November) shows a result of about 1.45kg of milk solids per cow for the 283 milking cows (14.5kg per cow at 4.59% protein, 5.52% fat).

Cell count is at 154 SCC, 16 TBC and 4.66% lactose. All the percentages crept up a little in the week.