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Weather
The weather over the past week has been horrendous and most farmers who had cows out had to house them fully.
The forecast for the weekend isn’t great either so it’s likely cows will either be housed, or on-off grazed for the coming days. Remember, it’s better to have a wet February than a wet March so while the weather is hard going for those who are trying to keep cows at grass, it will get easier.
When milking cows are housed, the risk of mastitis and underfeeding increases. Cubicle beds are not as clean as a field. Therefore, cubicles need to be cleaned down and disinfected at least twice a day. There’s no point in cleaning cubicles if the passageways are not kept clean because as soon as the cow stands on the cubicle it will be covered in muck. Depending on how full the shed is, the scraper might need to be going every three hours. Using hydrated lime has been shown to increase the pH of the bed, thus killing many of the mastitis-causing bacteria. Use a blend of 10% to 30% hydrated lime in ground limestone.
When I say there’s a risk of cows being underfed, it’s because their energy intake is less than their energy demands. While grazing will not eliminate this period of negative energy balance, it does minimise it as grass is a high-energy and high-protein feed. Silage is a lot lower in energy and protein so milking cows will need to be fed the best-quality silage on the farm and supplemented with extra meal when they are indoors.
Be careful not to feed too much meal to freshly calved cows, 4kg is probably enough. Another way to reduce the negative energy balance is to milk the cows once a day. This reduces the workload but probably increases the risk of mastitis, particularly if cows are leaking milk on cubicles.
Calving
Calving seems to be going well for most farmers. The trick is to keep it going well. Has the calving shed/calving pens been cleaned out yet? For every calf born, there are probably 30 or 40 litres of fluids along with the cleaning that comes with it. All of this material is rich feeding ground for bad bacteria.
Topping up with straw is really only cosmetic. The area needs to be fully cleaned out and the straw replaced. The calving shed can be a hotbed of infection unless it is kept clean.
Milk replacer
When mixing milk replacer, calculate the total amount of feed you need. For example, if you are feeding 10 calves 2l of milk you need 20l of mixed milk in total. If the feeding rate is 12%, the calves need to get 240g of powder each at each feed, or 2.4kg of powder for the bunch.
Because milk powder will displace water, you should reduce the amount of water used by the quantity of powder. So instead of mixing 2.4kg of powder into 20l of water, you should mix 2.4kg of powder into 17.6l of water to make 20l of mixed milk. When mixing, pour the correct amount of milk powder into half the desired amount of water and mix with a whisk or other mixing device. Then add the rest of the water. Never mix with boiling water as this could corrupt the proteins.
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