Wintered in-calf heifers show weight gain up to 80kg

A spring calving milk producer who rented a shed for wintering heifers after disappointing results on kale saw animal weights increase up to 80kg at calving compared to the out-wintered group.

Bill O’Keeffe, who runs a herd of 174 pedigree British Friesians with 120 maiden heifers and calves, wintered his in-calf heifers on the green crop two years ago.

But after they failed to achieve target weights at calving he changed his policy and rented a shed for A spring calving milk producer who rented a shed for wintering heifers after disappointing results on kale saw animal weights increase up to 80kg at calving compared to the out-wintered group.800. The average weight of the maiden heifers at calving was 480kg – about 80kg heavier.

“Our aim from our system is to push things to the limit, but we don’t want to compromise the health of youngstock. When we get them in good condition for calving it means a yield of more than 5000kg in the first lactation so they pay us back for looking after them in the winter,” says Mr O’Keeffe, of Churchclara, Kilkenny.

“Kale was a disaster for us. We lost out in the first and second lactations because the heifers were not in the best possible condition. You not only lose production, but you also lose out by cows not getting back into calf.”

He houses the heifers in November in a shed 1km from the farm. They are fed via a diet feeder three times a week. “It is less labour intensive than kale,” he believes.

Mr O’Keeffe, who farms with his father, Philip, and uncle, Matt, runs his herd on a strict spring grazing system with a herd milk average of 6000 litres at 4% fat and 3.5% protein.

He uses all his landmass, running 174 cows on 110ha, equating to a stocking rate of 2.5lu/ha.

Expansion means he is milking twice as many cows as he has quota for – a strategy he admits is risky.

He will receive 200,000 litres of quota when he joins the business as a new entrant, but is relying on the country being under quota this year to avoid a super levy fine.

Last year Mr O’Keeffe sold his in-calf and maiden heifers because the milk price had dropped to 20c/litre, yielding 1350 euro a head for in-calf heifers and 800 euro for maiden heifers.

His annual income from stock sales is 100,000 euro. “We can make as much money from selling heifers as we can from milking them. We are happy to tick along with the numbers we have until we are sure we can expand,” he says.

Further expansion plans include investing in a second parlour on a block of land away from the home farm. He has budgeted 150,000 euro for a basic system, but will also retain the existing 20-point parlour at Churchclara.

Poor weather

The cows are out day and night after calving, but this spring, with poor weather at turnout, the milking cows were on a stand-off pad for four nights – a situation he admits was far from ideal.

“A stand-off pad is OK for dry cows but when you put milking cows on there, there is twice the volume of dung. A pad is not ideal for the transition period. There are many ways to out winter a dry cow, but it’s the transition period that is the issue,” says Mr O’Keeffe.

For this reason he is considering abandoning the stand-off pad, which costs 15,000 euro a year to service, and investing in a shed. “I think there might be some roofs going up soon,” he says. “We catch a huge volume of rainwater on the pad and there is a cost associated with spreading it. I don’t think a pad is a runner in our situation,” he says.

Straw bedding costs 12 euro a bale compared to spreading slurry and dirty water with a trailing shoe at 60 euro an hour or 40 euro an hour for splash-plate application.

Trailing shoe

“If we had sheds we would use a trailing shoe because there is no rejection, but with the volume of slurry we have it’s too expensive.”

Mr O’Keeffe says the British Friesian suits his system. When he had Holsteins in the herd his empty rate at the end of an 18-week breeding period was 23%. He says it was worth losing 50 gallons of production by switching to Friesians because of health and fertility benefits. This year he recorded a 5% empty rate after 15 weeks.

“With Friesians we haven’t pared the cows’ feet for three years, we just use a footbath once a month. Mastitis and lameness have reduced hugely and fertility has shot up,” he says.

Gareth Davies, UK grassland genetics manager for Genus, and grassland specialist, Justin Rees, say the performance of the British Friesians on this farm demonstrates the breed has the level of fertility block calving farmers in the UK require.

“It also highlights the health and fitness traits that they can bring to conventional UK dairy farmers, when used as a cross on their existing Holsteins,” says Mr Davies.

“A lot of farmers of a certain generation will openly admit that the best cows they ever had were the first cross Holsteins out of their British Friesian cows. They produced a good quantity of milk, lasted in the herd and got back in calf. Those cows were half British Friesian.”