Farmer Focus: Only one heifer with cobalt deficiency

Since I last wrote, we haven’t had a typical month on the farm, or in our lives. Our daughter was in Ninewells Hospital in Dundee for 11 nights after having surgery.

We stayed with friends close by, who kindly gave us a bed and made the time away a lot easier. While there, I got a quick tour of the area.

Even though we were only a couple of hundred miles from Orkney, it felt like a lot further. The difference in the crops being grown and land values to rent or buy felt more like another planet.

See also: Advice on feeding yearling heifers to calve at 22-24 months

About the author

Steven Sandison

Livestock Farmer Focus writer Steven Sandison farms 90 Simmental and Salers-cross suckler cows on the Orkney Islands in partnership with his wife, Lorraine, on 134ha (330 acres). They have a 150-ewe flock of Shetland cross Cheviot ewes. Maximising grass is a priority.

Read more articles by Steven Sandison

We got silage all tidied up in good conditions before we went away. I think it may have been the driest silage we have ever made. It will be interesting to see what the analysis has to say.

We normally dose the lambs with a white wormer at clipping. They seemed very clean, so we took some dung samples and the worm count was very low and the lambs didn’t need to be treated.

I’ve mentioned before the problems we have had over the past 10 years with calved heifers losing condition rapidly in early summer.

Cobalt deficiency is the problem, so once I see them struggling I give them a couple of boluses, a B12 injection and a fluke and worm dose.

Last year we had more affected heifers than I had seen for a few years, so I did consider giving all the calved heifers a B12 injection as a prevention before turnout this spring.

I’m glad now I didn’t, for I’ve only had to treat one heifer this year.

Being away in the run-up to our local show meant we couldn’t show calves this year. I must have been smit by the showing bug, as the show day just wasn’t the same not having calves there.

All the shows were blessed with good weather, and it was great to see entries of stock holding up well.

I’m finishing off writing this in the early morning. There is nothing takes me out of bed faster than the sound of stock on the loose.

I think it was a false alarm this time, but surely someday I will get an electric wire around every field and gate.