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We’ve had a nice drop of rain over the last few weeks in the sunny southeast, with ground conditions turning quickly from hard as a rock to a bit messy around the gaps – to use the scientific terms.
Grass is growing well again in any case, and meal feeding has been reduced to 2kg/cow/day.
Hopefully it knows when to stop raining now so that the rest of the local tillage crops can be harvested in a timely fashion.
The roadways are getting very dirty with the buildup of dry material over the last few months getting diluted into an inch of slurry now on the surface of the tracks.
We have moved in with a small track machine this week to clean off this surface and to remove any grass kerbs that have formed at the sides of roadways over the spring. Cow flow tends to slow down enough at this time of the year without making walking any harder for the cows.
We will resurface some areas with new gravel if necessary and hopefully roll a few areas to pack them in again if weather conditions allow. The first priority is to get them clean and get any water flowing off to the side. Then we can assess the surface left behind and see what’s necessary.
We will foot-bath the herd a bit more regularly through the next few weeks and try to keep on top of lameness, which has been excellent all year.
Our scanner is booked in for this Thursday afternoon, so fingers crossed we get a good result. We will put empty cows on once-a-day milking for the rest of the year and try to keep them in good condition, get them dry early and get them out the gate finished before the expensive winter period.
Milk price has taken a hit on this side of the country with Glanbia seemingly leading the charge downwards at any sign of a slight weakness in the market.
Like the big centre-forward that calls for every puckout, takes all the frees and wants every ball played through them, they will drift out of the game when the real pressure comes. Fair play to the hardy little corner-forwards in west Cork who keep working hard, popping over the points and keep their noses, heads and arms in front.
We have the fastest growing milk pool in the country but unfortunately although we are getting bigger all the time, we don’t seem to be getting any better at delivering a milk price to our suppliers.
In fact, we seem to be getting further away from paying a sustainable milk price.
Profit warning
The news isn’t good on the plc front either with a profit warning last week causing the share price and the value of the co-op, by extension, to plunge. The usual dividends from our 31.5% stake that make their way from plc profits to the coffers of the co-op to prop up milk price might not be forthcoming this year.
I wonder if they would be as understanding if their 40% share of GII’s profit was paid out in milk price for a year.
While the plc is often described as the laying hen in the background of the main milk processing business, a wise farmer once remarked to me that “some of these laying hens tend to eat a lot of their own eggs”.
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