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It’s that time of year where we try to take stock of everything that has gone on in the past 12 months.
For us, it was a game of two halves. The first half got off to a roaring start, with good weather conditions right up to August, and we were comfortably ahead of financial budgets.
Then the weather broke and things became a bit more challenging to say the least. All in all, the first half (which in a spring-calving system is the most important) was very good and though we lost a bit of ground later in the season, we ended the year roughly where we had planned to.
Looking forward to the present, we currently have a total grass cover across the farm averaging 2,300kg dry matter per ha.
We are planning to feed about 750kg concentrate this year, and are budgeting for over 5,000l per cow of high constituent milk, at 4.9% butterfat and 3.85% protein. 2019 saw us achieve almost 4,800l.
Silage
Having done a feed budget, we may just scrape through with what silage we have, or at least just have to buy a little dry cow feed.
Our plan is to hold back some of our first cut for any springtime buffering, and feed everything else until its finished, before potentially going into the market to buy some additional supplies.
We are actually happy enough with this outcome, given that we were feeding almost a month earlier than planned last autumn. It would appear that our adoption of a more sensible stocking rate of 2.5 cows per ha means we are better able to weather the storms.
Team
We have a couple of students coming over from Ireland throughout 2020 to join our team. The first is a four month and second is a six month placement.
The students I have had on the farm in the past have been of a high calibre and are very keen to learn. They have also got youth on their side which is a great help!
I am very open to student placements and the hope is that some of these enthusiastic young people will, once they complete their studies, join us for a couple of years to build up their management experience.
Sexed semen
As part of 2020 planning I am also starting to look at semen for next year. We are probably going to go wholesale sexed semen to get our replacements. That will mean using it over the maiden heifers, along with some of our best cows.
Otherwise, we will use Hereford or Belgian Blue bulls on everything else.
We also plan to breed for 14 or 15 weeks, and because we are using artificial insemination (AI) throughout, we will have exact calving dates for the cows served from week 11 onwards.
These cows will be sold as late calvers, which should hopefully raise the value of these culls. However, the empty rate I quote in the future will remain whatever was in-calf at week 11 – there is no point in kidding ourselves!
On a final note, we have had an employee, Karl Simms, retire recently. He has worked on this farm for 47 years, 13 of which have been with us.
We will miss his ability to be able to turn his hand to just about anything, his utter reliability, and his dry wit.
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