Herd Tasks: Your weekly farming checklist
After a dry spell, when rain comes, it provides the ideal conditions for parasites to affect stock. Watch for coughing and loose dung.
- Continue to allocate quality grass to the most productive stock.
- Consider pre-mowing where grass quality is not ideal.
- If grass is tight but you have had a jump in growth, slowly reduce the rotation length to maintain quality grass for stock.
- Reseeding or stitching should be considered in underperforming paddocks.
- After a dry spell, when rain comes, it provides the ideal conditions for parasites to affect stock. Watch for coughing and loose dung. Faecal samples through your vet should be considered before dosing.
- Milk urea levels remain low around the country. Forcing or recommencing low-protein supplementation is downright irresponsible at present, as it continues to have a detrimental effect on cow performance.
- Low urea levels mean poor protein supplementation, resulting in depressed intakes, lower butterfats and lower yields.
- Watch for mastitis in dry autumn calvers. Keep fly control up to date.
- Dry sucklers should be allocated lower-quality grass to prevent them from becoming over-conditioned.
- When weaning calves, keep meal feeding up for a few weeks afterwards to reduce stress. This is compulsory for anyone in the SCEP.
- Keep high-mag mineral licks with spring calvers.
- Young calves and weanlings on grass are thriving well once they are getting a fresh pick of grass regularly. Those not being moved regularly and being forced to graze very tightly are not performing well, as energy intakes are poor.
