Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

Freejin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119724838#Comment_119724838

Have used ubroseal the last few years ,happy enough with it,however it was without the blue dye. Think I got last of the old batch from my vet last year without dye. My understanding from my vet is that coops are pushing it as residues of sealer were tainting cheese?? Stand to be corrected on that now though

straight

I see teagasc are saying parlour washings add up to 30 litres per cow. That's way off compared to my calculations at 11 litres per cow on my farm. Another guy in my discussion group came up with a similar figure to me when he measured his water use.

alps

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119727775#Comment_119727775

Per milking or per day?

straight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119728305#Comment_119728305

Day. I have plenty storage anyway so it doesn't matter to me at the moment. And unless I get more land my cow numbers are going to be only going one way due to regulations. Just making the point that for us the figure should be halved.

alps

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119728783#Comment_119728783

Rough estimate here would be 24 l per day..

Where does this complicate things?

If we build a dirty water storage tank, how many weeks must it be able to hold? Previously it was 10 days, what is it now?

Say my name

Anyone that bought a Grasshopper plate meter.

Did ye get a charger with it too?

I got a charging cable but no charger.

I've emailed them off a message but no response yet.

Tried phone chargers with the same ports but it won't charge.

Green&Red

https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/dairy/farmer-loses-part-of-his-dairy-herd-to-bloat-due-to-high-levels-of-clover-in-their-diet-42055765.html

Warning for any with high levels of clover, some buffering before they go out seems to be the way to go

alps

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119730936#Comment_119730936

Happened to a friend of mine years ago and he never gotbover it. Never again comfortable about using clover.

Some way to lose animals and the work involved trying to prevent it from happening. Plan doing lots of reseeding and thought clover was only way to go, is it or just go with grass and suck up high fertiliser prices but with less minding of clover as well?

Mooooo

Dunno will we have a choice but figure it out

Wildsurfer

It's good that we have farmers coming out telling us their experiences of clover. When we were on a teagasc clover research farm it was all positive from the advisor untill we asked about bloat. No problem lately except the year we lost 20 cows was the reply. Not anti Teagasc but this is a bit like the 'oops we didn't think about the Jersey bulls', pushing clover without a solution to the bloat issue. Going out to the field out and finding an animal dead is such a demoralising aspect of farming that a lot will be slow to adapt any measures that might increase that risk.

Say my name

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119731649#Comment_119731649

Go foliar and just grass and whatever clover seeds itself.

Small farm here and I couldn't afford to lose stock to bloat with heavy clover. Lost a few in my father's time to bloat from clover too. You'd think sometimes agriculture has just been invented by advisors and farmers have just come from the town to try it out..

GrasstoMilk

To me it sounds more like nitrogen bloat than clover

lost a 1st calver here 2 weeks ago and still sickened, she got fucked over the roadway fence and bloated up on the spot

lost 5 in 2018 on my daughters 1st birthday, still haunts me. I absolutely hate loosing stock to the knackery, the loss of what could have been irks me big time

straight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119732003#Comment_119732003

Hard going. Do you have collars or something. Would they not pick up the distress?

alps

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119732014#Comment_119732014

To pick up distress you need an aid that is within range of the data controller at all times. Do any of the collars stay connected at all times? Thought they only upload info when the cow returns to the parlour. The dead cow may not come back..

GrasstoMilk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119732014#Comment_119732014

Have collars yes but it happened so quickly it wouldn’t have picked it up

collars we have will pick them up if they’re within 800m from station

alps

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119732247#Comment_119732247

Can you install a number of stations arou d the farm?

DBK1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119731649#Comment_119731649

I can’t speak from a dairy cow point of view but from a beef perspective I’ve a lot of swards with very high clover content and haven’t had any problems grazing them. The first day cattle are let on to them I make sure they’re full from wherever they came from. If you let them out hungry they will gorge on it. It is recommended to have access to hay or straw for the first few days and restrict the intake. I’ve never done this and didn’t run into problems but again it’s beef stock and not dairy cows I have.

Silage made from these swards is top quality too. I regularly make silage above 30%dm, high 70’s in dmd and high teens for protein. It will only yield 6-8 bales per acre every time but 3 cuts a year is no problem and all top quality.

RightTurnClyde

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119731836#Comment_119731836

You'd wonder sometimes, alright. Teagasc comes up with an idea, no research, becomes policy, farmers run with it. Then a big Uturn within a few years.

There's a share of "dairy experts" in Teagasc and the ifj that are from sheeps farms and they think they have invented the wheel re dairying. So many of their big policy creations since 2012 have completely failed. How much of their new big policy's in the last 10 yrs, from tillage farm conversions, to golf ball grazing, to OWP, to OCs, to lagoons, to Jerseys, to NZx, to high stocking rates, RBI/EBI now clover etc is sustainable, good practice dairy farming.

Most of these were tried from the 50s to the80s and failed, farmers learned leasons, and moved ahead. The new advisors arrived on the scene post 2012, were of the opinion that dairying needed fixing and have done untold harm to an ag industry that was doing very well.

GrasstoMilk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119732521#Comment_119732521

You can but we don’t need to here, most of the farm gets picked up

very rare you’d have a cow chronically sick at grass, any really sick cows here are usually around calving when they’re in the yard

cjpm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119732956#Comment_119732956

I’d thank this post 10 times if I could.

ginger22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119731726#Comment_119731726

Why would you bother with clover on grazing paddocks. Foliar feeding costs less than 20 euros per acre each round and you are in full control of grass, not depending on the uncertain clover growth, no spring growth, variable in summer and autumn depending on weather, bloat risk. Now red clover for dedicated silage swards is OK but only lasts 3 to 4 years. And dont get me started on mixed species swards, most will die out after 2 or 3 years and all you are left with are poor grass, clover and weeds. You would wonder where Teagasc get these genius advisors. One head guy comes up with a theory and all the minions repeat it like parrots and when said often enough it becomes fact.

Siamsa Sessions

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119733170#Comment_119733170

Teagasc are civil servants. Their job is to support Govt policy such as FoodWise-2030 which is all about driving up exports/production. When something affects that single goal, like fertiliser price or environment issues, then they jump on any quick fix - like MMS, increasing clover, sexed semen, DBI, etc. Anything that might help, but won't impact the main policy (driving exports)

RightTurnClyde

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119733170#Comment_119733170

They can put "clover massively increases methane and CO2 production in cows" in the "we didn't think of the calves" box

jaymla627

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119733170#Comment_119733170

Bloat is the least of it, on high molybdenum soils white clover is literally poison to animals, teagasc know this they have documented research on it and know vast areas of Ireland are simply not suitable for clover swards

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They're f**King clowns plain and simple

mahoney_j

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119732956#Comment_119732956

Belter of a post and bang on ….imo this clover thing and amount of n it’s claiming to reduce is suspect at best ….I’ve incorporated a bit but at higher sr I can’t honestly see any benefit ….can’t say cows do better on fields I have more clover ….I’m more interested in seen what a mss sward will do long term

ginger22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119733646#Comment_119733646

MSS wont do anything long term, just a short term fix. Neighbour did some 3 years ago, was up on youtube promoting it for Teagasc. It is now fu,,,,d. He did another reseed this year, no MSS, just grass and clover.

K.G.

You ve got to wonder why teagasc haven't trailled foliar nitrogen. My take 9n teagasc is they should make mistakes.they should trail things and come back with the results and it's up to the farmers to make up their own mind on their results.personally o have my doubts about clovers ability to sustain stocking rates at any thing close to or above a cow to the acre and I think some lads haven't realised yet what the implications of reduced availability of nitrogen will mean.for the first time in maybe 15 years we are tight on silage due to drought and fertiliser reducing.if I have any crib it's more with ifj and jk in particular as he seemed to be very narrow minded in relation to nz practices.i ve picked and choosed what I adopted over the years and tried alot of things and still do but I am absolutely convinced that irelands adoption of a grass based system resulted in a huge lift in margin on most Irish farms.up to 20 years ago irelands system was strongly geared to a semi Indoor high input system which demanded a very high level of management and labour imput.how quickly we forget the high empty rates of the 90 s.its easy to blame someone else but every one has a head on their shoulders too

JustJoe7240

Just come off twitter and some of the farmers on there are painful. Very condescending in their manner as If everyone is wrong bar them. A farmer put up a picture of some zero grazed grass and the first comment was a snipe from a prominent oad farmer. As if anyone wants to see any of that craic.

cosatron

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119735121#Comment_119735121

twitter is doing more harm than good for irish farming. Some lads should have more sense than put up some of the nonsense they put up.