Back to school on the Hynes' farm
A healthy herd makes life easier on the farm but also reduces the workload and I know our vets feel a part of the show team as well. Picture: Larry Cummins
Time flies and I don’t know where the year has gone.
For most people all the focus is on preparing for back to school and yes we too have a little eye on the school uniform, etc, but we are also in the thick of the drying of a few cows and full dry cow diets.
All the heifers and cows due to calve over the next six weeks are up close to our house and grass with a strip fence moved every 48 hours along with access to haylage, and are being fed 1kg of oats with dry cow minerals as well.
We always find oats in the dry cow diet give cows great energy and newborn calves also seem to benefit from that energy by having a get-and-go attitude the moment they are born.
We also give the group access to dry cow mineral licks, ensuring they are well covered for pre-calver minerals. We are a little excited to see this group calve, the majority are in calf to sexed semen, there are the chief heifers in the group and over half the group has been showing winners as youngstock.
We have also been drying off a number of cows lately, it is a key time to ensure somatic cell count is protected and also improve somatic cell count for the following lactation. It can be a little trickier slowing down milk production with some cows at this time of the year so we generally change the diet to hay to ensure they still have a good rumen fill.
We did have an issue slowing down the milk production on one cow so rather than impacting body condition, we also gave her two boluses which help aid the slowing of milk production and at least we could speed up the drying-off process.
Somatic cell count can be a huge issue on some farms and has big financial implications, we have had our own fair share of challenges in getting a handle on the average herd cell count. This time last year our SCC for August was 324 and it was over 400 two months before that and got worse into the autumn.
It was quite a dismal point for us as we had been doing everything as best we could over the last few years. The cost was also a burden as we were constantly treating cows for mastitis and dumping milk.
We knew in the lead-up to drying off that we had to make a massive improvement and fast. All cows received a long-acting dry cow tube as they did every other winter and we also sourced a new teat sealer from our vets.
It looked like it worked well but the proof is always in the pudding and as the year moves on now, we haven’t had one case of mastitis this year, our SCC is only 130 now averaging 98 for April and 128 in May.
It has been a welcome cost-saver this year by not having to dump milk but also a sense of relief that we don’t have to worry about penalties or the milk quality advisor ringing us.
I know teat sealers aren’t the only part of dry cow therapy but I do think it helped us ensure every other part of our dry cow program is working effectively, I know I'll be ordering more from our vets in the coming months.
It is a relationship we like having with the veterinary, we see new products as do they and we are all willing to try and do things a little better or different so we bounce ideas off each other and share results.
A healthy herd makes life easier on the farm but also reduces the workload and I know our vets feel a part of the show team as well.
They’ve been involved in the synch program which led to a new show calf being born or TB tested prior to a big show and they know most of the show team by name in the surgery.
We also have a cow on a flush program at the moment so she is getting daily injections and fingers crossed it will go okay. She is being served to Crushable sexed semen and it is another team effort as Melvin Masterson is our embryo tech.
Our Munster Bovine AI technician will serve her and if all goes to plan, it will be our own vet who synchronizes the batch of recipients in the autumn.
The recipient heifers will be housed early this year to ensure their diet is specific and constant for eight weeks before implanting as we are also waiting for our other embryos to be shipped to the UK.
In many ways embryo work is like drying of cows, do the simple things right and attention to detail. We have another heifer that has just gone onto a fixed diet in preparation to become an embryo donor.
