Herd Tasks: Your weekly farming checklist
Forward prices for rolled cereals and blends this winter will be well above harvest prices, so now is the time to make savings.
- If growth hasn’t fully recovered after the moisture deficit, you must continue to supplement stock until appropriate covers are available.
- If you can handle it, consider purchasing cereals off the combine — the harvest is moving on, so act soon.
- Cereals continue to represent by far the best value for money for the coming winter.
- Forward prices for rolled cereals and blends this winter will be well above harvest prices, so now is the time to make savings.
- Continue your parasite control programme.
- Monitor stock and use available diagnostic tools to make dosing decisions for each group.
- Continue to feed and manage dry cows to maintain/control body condition.
- Get calves off to the best possible start with a good supply of colostrum. Slow drinkers should be tubed if necessary, within the first four to six hours.
- If you have vaccinated cows, then the full benefit will not be transferred to the calves if sufficient colostrum is not consumed.
- Aim to keep intakes up by strip grazing heavier covers and allocating quality grass by night where possible.
- Many will need to supplement with maize, whole crop or quality bales to stretch grass and allow farm covers to improve.
- Has dung consistency changed? Are cows’ yields dropping much faster than in previous years? Have milk solids dropped? Energy drives milk protein. Fibre intake and digestion drives butter fat.
- Keep a close eye on milk urea as this is an indicator that insufficient protein is being fed, both from the grass and any supplementation.
- Continue to supplement cows with calves at foot with magnesium licks.
- Young stock: Make sure you grow them as well as possible — gaining weight from grass in young animals is much cheaper than when they are housed.
- Many will begin creep-feeding spring calves soon if not already doing so to boost growth and take pressure off the dam as well as reducing grass and/or silage demand — make sure that the concentrate being fed contains good quality ingredients to encourage intake.
- Get calves to be weaned and castrated if not selling or finishing them as bulls and dose them well in advance.
- Cattle to be finished on grass will now benefit from a few kilo of a low-protein, high-energy concentrate to get the final cover on them.
- Due to a lack of grass in some areas, extra meal is being fed: Make sure it is suitable for the rates being fed.
