Herd Tasks: Your weekly farming checklist
Soil test underperforming paddocks, and aim to apply lime where it is required before next season.
- Once stock go indoors, clean out water troughs regularly. If cattle don’t drink, they don’t eat and, as a result, don’t perform.
- Soil test underperforming paddocks, and aim to apply lime where it is required before next season. It is the cheapest fertiliser you can buy.
- Get calves off to the best possible start with a good supply of colostrum.
- Lazy drinkers should be stomach-tubed if necessary within the first six hours.
- If you have vaccinated cows, then the full benefit will not be transferred to the calves if sufficient colostrum is not consumed.
- Don’t stock pens too heavily to avoid bullying of fresh cows and injury to calves.
- Dry sucklers, once soaked up, need to be on bare paddocks or on stronger silages just after drying off to keep control of condition.
- Driving intake must be your priority to boost milk and fertility performance in autumn calvers.
- Consistent feeding indoors is the way to achieve this, as we are now almost in November and artificial insemination season for autumn 2026 calving.
- Autumn calvers will not perform well on grass from now on, and really should be in full-time at this point.
- Spring calvers with still 40 to 50 days of milking to do will also benefit from being in by night.
- It will mean they can stay out by day for longer into the winter, where grass is available and weather permits.
