Herd Tasks: Your weekly farming checklist
Driving intake should be the priority to boost milk and fertility performance in fresh cows.
- Have targets set for getting around the farm, but don’t get obsessed with pushing cows to grass if it means that you won’t achieve sufficient energy intake to support their performance targets. It is still a long way to the start of the second round.
- Have a look into water troughs ahead of cattle and clean them out where necessary.
- Slurry application. When applying, take care not to spread heavy volumes on advanced grass swards as it will result in low utilisation at grazing.
- A fertiliser application plan needs to be put in place. Many have no fertiliser out but plan to get it out once there is a forecast for temperatures to rise, as the ground will react well to it as the days get longer and growth will improve.
- Soil temperatures are not yet at five degrees and, on average, one degree below normal.
- Driving intake should be the priority to boost milk and fertility performance in fresh cows.
- Supply fresh cows with the best quality forage you have on the farm and balance with a sufficient volume of an appropriate concentrate.
- Introduce cows slowly to grass and increase allocations each day for a week before leaving them out between morning and evening milking.
- Don’t forget the magnesium bucket for cows and calves when they do go to grass. One bucket per 20 cows is the recommended rate.
- If turning cows and calves out to grass soon, then continue to monitor calves suckling. Try to put them into a field with plenty of shelter for the first few days and nights.
- Continue to feed dry cows with the appropriate dry cow mineral and keep an eye that they are not getting over conditioned as those left to calve will be much longer dry.
