Herd Tasks: Your weekly farming checklist
Keep autumn calvers on a low plane of nutrition to control body condition.
Monday, August 17 - Sunday, August 23
- Try to prioritise the best-quality grass, if you have any, for the most productive stock on the farm.
- Monitor all stock for parasite burdens and dose accordingly.
- Make sure all stock have a plentiful supply of clean water and check troughs daily.
- Aim to keep total intakes up to maintain performance. Many are supplementing heavily, as I covered earlier, with maize, wholecrop, pit silage, quality bales or moist feeds to stretch grass and allow farm covers to improve once we get sufficient moisture. All will need to be balanced correctly to maintain performance.
- Cows due to calve soon should be kept in good condition, supplied with a pre-calver mineral and fed some meal with silage if grass has not recovered as they approach calving.
- Continue to supplement cows with calves at foot with magnesium licks.
- Keep autumn calvers on a low plane of nutrition to control body condition.
- Supplement fresh cows with magnesium licks.
- Weanling sales are up and running and, as always, it pays better to feed weanlings concentrates pre-sale. Feeding 4-5kg of a weanling ration on quality grass will pay very well with current mart prices. The buyer will also reap the benefits, as they will be able to increase feeding faster because the weanlings are already well settled on it.
