Farmer Focus: Freezing conditions ease slurry storage
Colin Murdoch © Jeff Holmes January seems to have disappeared alarmingly quickly.
I remember the older generation saying that the years seem to go faster, but I’m completely unprepared for actually being that generation. Luckily, I should have plenty of time yet.
Our youngest son, Rory, turned four this week. It seems only the blink of an eye since he was born. I wonder what sort of world our children are going to grow up to live in.
It’ll certainly be interesting to see how things play out “across the pond” over the next few months.
See also: Advice on flexible milking as a management tool
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Once again, we enjoyed a lovely festive period seeing family and friends.
It’s the one school holiday when it’s easy to spend extra time with our boys, and we certainly make the most of it.
It was back to reality with a bump, though, as freezing temperatures meant we were able to empty all our slurry stores.
By the time they’re full again, it should hopefully be good timing for a spring application prior to silage.
I’m adamant that there is much more beneficial effect in applying slurry little and often when weather conditions allow, rather than “calendar farming”.
Cows are milking well on their winter ration. We’re now on 30kg of first-cut silage, 5kg of wholecrop wheat, 3.5kg of crimped wheat and 5kg of protein blend, with current yields at 24 litres.
Solids have held up well, at 6.5% butterfat and 4.4% protein. Pleasingly, fertility rates have been really good, and we’ve managed to shave 15 days off our calving interval, which is running at 378 days.
I still think transition cow management can improve, but a tweak to the protein level and adding magnesium flakes have helped.
We’ve recently joined our vet’s calf health scheme, which involves quarterly benchmarking and fortnightly monitoring of calves carried out by a vet technician.
This should show us quick results to any changes we make, particularly with colostrum quality, and is proving invaluable.
I often wonder if our cows would perform better on a robotic system but, with our parlour only 12 years old, I’ll not be finding out any time soon.
We’ve recently taken on two new relief milkers. Maybe I should suggest going to three-times-a-day milking.