Getting cows in-calf is the main focus for James King on his farm near Ballymena, Co Antrim.

The scanner arrives every three or four weeks to go through cows that have been served over 30 days, as well as any cows that are eligible for service but have not showed signs of heat.

There were 20 cows scanned last Thursday and 17 turned out in-calf. The three empties had issues with early embryonic death and will be examined and washed out by a vet.

The regular scanning allows any issues like this to be identified early and means cows that are not in-calf are quickly cycling again and ready for service.

James is putting significant effort into heat detection this year, with casual labour employed to help with watching cows and touching up tail paints. The AI technician serves cows once a day.

Like all Dairylink Ireland participants, James’s animal health plan is being revised at present following recent blood sampling and bulk milk tank testing

James had some issues with silent heats and the scanner has been actively identifying these cows for treatment. Any cows that the scanner sees are cycling, but are not showing signs of heat, are put on a synchronisation programme with injectable prostaglandin.

Cows on the King farm that show no signs of cycling when scanned are synchronised with CIDRs.

Dairylink adviser Aidan Cushnahan suggested that low dietary energy intakes among cows could be causing silent heats in the herd. The amount of blend going into the mixer wagon for cows in the high-yield group was subsequently increased by 1kg to 8kg/cow/day.

Milk yields took a lift after this and the herd average is now sitting at 33l/cow/day, although James notes that there have been significantly fewer silent heats too.

Like all Dairylink Ireland participants, James’s animal health plan is being revised at present following recent blood sampling and bulk milk tank testing.

All calves on the King farm are beef-sired.

Results from these tests could help inform measures for improving herd fertility, if animal health issues are found to be playing an underlying role.

The dry cow diet on the King farm has also been reviewed in recent weeks, following a colostrum testing exercise. Dairylink farms were equipped with colostrum testing kits and James found that a few samples had immunoglobin (IgG) readings below the optimal level of 50mg/ml.

He has subsequently increased crude protein levels in the dry cow diet by changing from minerals on top of silage to offering 2kg/cow/day of a 20% crude protein dry cow concentrate.

Dairylink: Getting on top of fertility in Antrim.

Winter feeding and plans for spring grazing

There are 160 cows going through the parlour on the King farm at present. The milking herd is split into two groups, with 136 cows in the high-yielding group offered a total mixed ration of silage, blend, straw nuts, molasses and a supplement to regulate rumen pH.

There are 24 cows in the low-yielding group that are offered grass silage only in the cubicle house, plus concentrates in a feed-to-yield system in the parlour. This group is mainly made up of early autumn calvers, although there are a few stale cows present that will be dried off shortly for calving in the spring.

The plan over the next few weeks is to grow the low-yielding group to around 40 autumn calvers that are over peak lactation and scanned in-calf. This group will be turned out to grass once ground conditions allow.

There are 160 cows milking across two groups.

James is better set up for early spring grazing this year, as he made sure to close paddocks up in the autumn. The year before, heifers grazed the milking platform in the early winter, which meant there were no paddocks with adequate grass covers for cows last February, even though ground conditions were ideal.

A review of fodder stocks on the King farm last week found that there should be plenty of silage available for the rest of the winter. The revised fodder budget had enough silage to do the entire milking herd for another three months. This would take James up to the end of April, but in practice, it should do even longer if a low-yielding group get out to grass early.

Slurry and calves

There is still free slurry storage on the King farm and James is in no hurry to get slurry out once the closed period ends on January 31. Soil samples are being taken on the farm this week and when the results come back, slurry will be mainly targeted at fields with low phosphorus and potassium indexes.

The revised fodder budget had enough silage to do the entire milking herd for another three months

James operates a flying herd, meaning all replacements are bought in and beef semen is used when serving cows. He has been selling these beef-sired calves in the mart before weaning. Calves are in individual pens initially, but are put into group pens and offered whole milk ad-lib through a HeatWave calf feeder.

Weekly round up

  • Autumn calving cows are being scanned on Dairylink Ireland farms at present.
  • The closed period for slurry spreading ends on all programme farms at midnight on Friday, January 31.
  • Participants in phase one and two of the programme have soil sampled each paddock on their farm over the winter.
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