Herd Tasks: Your weekly farming checklist
Clean water troughs regularly. If cattle don’t drink, they don’t eat and, as a result, don’t perform, warns Brian Reidy.
- 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 few 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 in fresh autumn calvers must be your priority to boost milk and fertility performance
- Fresh cows should be indoors full-time at this point, regardless of grass availability. It offers very little to fresh cows at this point.
- Consistent feeding indoors is the way to achieve this, as we are now heading into November and AI season for autumn 2027 calving will begin soon.
- 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.
- Establish your silage quality for these animals and supplement sufficient protein to maintain growth targets
- Ensure any concentrates used to finish cattle are high in energy; this will require higher inclusions of cereals, so they should be high up on the label.
