Herd Tasks: Your weekly farming checklist
Most, if not all, stock that will be housed are now indoors, so now is the time to discuss the correct dosing protocol for your herd with your vet, advises Brian.
- Most, if not all, stock that will be housed are now indoors, so now is the time to discuss the correct dosing protocol for your herd with your vet.
- Ensure that whatever dose you use is applied correctly, with the appropriate volume, and that you are targeting the parasites present in your herd.
- Weigh all animals, or at least a sample group, to help calibrate your dosing accuracy.
- Discuss the correct vaccination protocol with your vet if you don’t have a herd health plan in place.
- Check and clean water troughs daily.
- Stock can get very stressed without water, particularly if silages are dry or higher levels of concentrates are being fed.
- Driving intake must be your priority to boost milk and fertility performance in fresh cows.
- Consistent feeding indoors is the way to achieve this, as we are now in November and AI season for autumn 2026 calving will start soon in many yards.
- Autumn calvers should be housed full-time now, as grass is adding nothing to these cows’ diets at this point.
- Spring calvers still have 30–40 days of milking to do and will benefit from being in by night to optimise intakes and maintain performance and kg of solids produced.
- Being housed by night will mean that they can stay out by day longer into the winter, where grass is available and weather permits.
- Group dry cows according to body condition at housing and feed them accordingly.
- If cows are going to be dry for a long period, pushing for condition will not be necessary.
- Ensure you are supplying sufficient protein to growing cattle.
- Some silages are very low in protein this year.
- Appreciate the limitations of grass silage when devising feeding strategies for finishing stock.
- Only the very top-quality silages are capable of achieving in excess of 0.5–0.6kg/day in heavier stock.
