Herd Tasks: Your weekly farming checklist
Fibre digestion drives butter fats, writes ruminant nutritionist Brian Reidy.
- As weather improves, a target fertiliser and slurry strategy to optimise grass growth and optimise nutrient utilisation.
- Fertiliser strategies must be devised around recent soil results.
- Early N always drives growth.
- Don’t wait until it warms up to get N out.
- Under-fertilising swards will lead to poor field and animal performance.
- Monitor intakes carefully and act fast if any key performance indicators change dramatically. Are solids stabilising?
- Keep energy up to support milk proteins.
- Lactose in milk indicates energy supply.
- Fibre digestion drives butter fats.
- Watch urea levels in milk.
- Magnesium buckets for cows and calves at grass are critical in colder conditions and with lush grass.
- Supply sufficient grass to cows rearing calves.
- This will drive milk quality to grow the calf and provide sufficient energy to get her back in calf.
- Begin grazing weanlings with lower covers to get them used to grazing.
- Heifers behind target for breeding must get additional supplementation with grass to catch up.
