Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

I know of a neighbor who stood iron rails along the ditches of a right away boreen in case the guy with the right away would rub against it. It's too narrow for anything except a mf35 and small vicon. A small plot in the cemetery will hold him afterwards. Anyways, I'm looking at dry cow mineral prices. Are they gone up as well. Anyone bolus the dairy cows instead

Same here

The last 365 days milk solids averaged 3.49pr and 4.52bf. Happy with that. Obviously the farms that I’m buying from are doing something right.

To the end of Oct I'm at 3.95bf and 3.63p, dunno will nov bring me past the 4 in bf or not, seem to be stuck at the 4 for the year the last few years in bf. Protein has increased from 3.5 to 3.65 in same time frame

Graise consultancy update. Tough going. Fair play to him for his honesty.

https://www.facebook.com/1161444260573591/posts/4664587563592559/

Did you change your management practice. If you feed stronger covers it will increase butterfat. Feed lower covers will increase protein percentage. Sometimes it goes straight through them. That's my 2 cents anyway.

Ya. No point talking about 1 in isolation though. I don't get it.

The highs and severe, brutal lows of farming.

20 years after selling my farms (19 actually but I like rounding and even numbers) I got the opportunity to own our own farm again back “home” in New Zealand and put into practice what I have been passionate about for the last several years as a consultant in Ireland and the UK.

I know many people who I have met through my time consulting as well as many others who have followed my articles and podcasts have wondered how I would go, knowing very well that coming onto someone’s farm and advising them is very, very different than actually doing it.

The change started well enough, although the contingency fund in our budget was blown as soon as we got going, on the 1st of June when we took over the new farm there was absolutely no grass on the farm as there had been a severe drought ending very late so we spent just under $70K on kale, straw and silage to winter our 240 cows to bring them onto the farm late in July at which time the pasture cover was still below 1700KgDM/Ha.  

Pasture growth was very good from then on, making up for the poor growth in autumn as nature so often does and our AFC actually lifted through August and September, we managed to get through using only 12T of PKE and 12 bales of whole crop silage, dropping everything to pasture-only by the middle of September.

Calving went incredibly well, we found it reasonably comfortable to manage calving, milking and feeding calves with the two of us (myself and my wife Olga). Key to this was that we had no heifers, only mature, young cows. 

No young stock to manage and we only reared 25 calves with the remainder going as bobbies and we milked "3 in 2" right from the start, milking at 6am, 4pm and 11am which means a “sleep in” every second day.

One thing I really missed in my time away from farming was the connection with my own cows. Most of my clients know how much I love nice, good cows and it has been fantastic to be back owning a herd of cows and being able to get the pick of 240 cows from a herd of 720 means we have a herd of tidy uddered young cows. We got the first 180 cows calved with only 2 mild milk fever cases, 2 cases of mastitis, we lost 2 cows and 4 calves. 

Then it all fell apart.

In late September we started to get a few cows that stopped eating and within 3 days turned from a nice productive cow to dying, a few others that stopped eating, we dropped them out of the herd and they scraped through but now dry. Then some others had a dead calf and didn’t come into milk. Our vet couldn’t figure out what was wrong and was of little help but when I spoke to the previous owners they told me that they had the same issue last year which they eventually found out was theileria, a blood anaemia caused by ticks infecting the cows, very rare in the South Island but common North of Taupo.

We got blood tests done and sure enough they confirmed that we were dealing with theileria. As a farmer when you know there is an issue you just want to do everything you can to resolve it but our vet told us there was nothing we can do except minimise stress and hope not too many cows would be affected. Over the next week we lost another few cows and had more cows drop dead calves, on the worst day in a severe cold, windy, wet couple of days we lost 4 beautiful young cows. It was devastating, there were a lot of tears and it felt like all the energy was sucked out of us. 

We often speak about resilience and the pressure on mental health in farming. Very few people outside of farming understand the connections we create with out stock and the impact it has when things go bad, we had to dig very deep to stay positive and ensure that we left our issues at the door when we came into the house as much as we could so that our kids wouldn’t have to live with the pressure as much as we were. 

I spoke to some of my farmer friends through this time, one of them had lost 25 cows and 55 aborted with nitrate poisoning in their first year in a large equity partnership. Another had had a salmonella outbreak one spring with around 50 cows aborting along with all the issues that come with that. Most farmers have a had to face some sort of extraordinary challenge at some time, it’s all good when things go to plan but it can really test your resilience when things fall apart!

By chance I came across someone who gave me the contact number of Ian Brown, one of the leading farmer/vets in the country on theileria who was able to explain many aspects of the disease and give us some hope. In our case what hit us so hard was bringing a naïve herd onto a property carrying infected ticks. Ticks become active in late July, about the time our cows arrived on-farm from grazing. It takes around 6 to 8 weeks for the protozoa to build in the cows and then affects mainly cows in the last week prior to calving and the first 2 weeks following calving as they are going through their most stressful time.

To reduce the exposure we are going to get tick-tags into the cows’ ears to give them protection for several months and attempt to reduce the tick numbers on the farm, with the plan to put new tick-tags into all cows in mid-July next year which hopefully will protect them through the highest risk time.

It’s good to have something we can do to minimise the impact rather than just watching good cows die. Our resilience has been tested. We have lost 15 cows and have 4 dry survivors, and there have been several cows in the herd reduced to milking once every 2 to 3 days that have now come back to every milking and even cycling. 

The 3 in 2 milking routine has been outstanding, I am so glad we made the late change of direction to go that way instead of OAD as production has been outstanding, peaking at 2.05-2.1KgMS/cow on grass only before the theileria issues knocked us back, currently fairly stable at around 1.9KgMS/cow with SCC consistently running 70-90K. BCS has held very well and my pre-mating assessment would suggest slightly higher BCS than a month earlier.

We have had one lame cow to date and 3 cases of mastitis at calving with no further cases in the milking herd. I would imagine if we had been OAD these stats would be significantly different.

Only slight disappointment is 78% SR in the first 21 days of mating but non-cycler scan today, day 23, showed only 2 cows with no activity, all others either an active CL or good follicle so we should hit 95%+ submitted in 6 weeks.

We are in the process of having 600T of lime spread at 5T/Ha, started with the 8Ha sowed in peas, oats and MSS, the 9Ha sowed in turnips & plantain and 4Ha in kale & Red Clover, then 30Ha that was direct drilled with MSS (red, white and Persian clover, vetch, plantain and chicory) into annuals and now carrying on with the rest of the milking platform. The turnips, kale and MSS was sown the 26th of October and got followed by 8mm of rain immediately post sowing, it has all germinated now and visible at close inspection but it has gone extremely dry with no rain in the forecast so we are hanging out for some moisture to keep the seedlings going.

Overall there have been huge ups and some severe downs, we have learnt a lot about the farm, 3 in 2 milking routine and the herd and we are looking forward to building the base to a more resilient system through more diverse pasture species and healthier soils, starting with lime to build PH.

We have used 20KgN/Ha on 120Ha to date and don’t plan to use any more on pasture until autumn, will use N on the turnips and kale if rain comes, expect to use around 35KgN/Ha for the year. Good thing our exposure is low with the high cost of N!!

All in all, really glad to have gone back farming for ourselves, the right move for our kids I think as they hated me being away before they got up or for several days on trips to the UK and they have got involved in the whole thing which is cool.

With everything going on in the media and social media, it's important to be confident you’re doing the right thing for animal welfare and economic, social and environmental responsibility so that you are able to shut out the “noise” from the uneducated, ignorant and hypocrites looking to make financial gain from alternative food industry. Don't listen to criticism from anyone who you wouldn't take advice from!!

I welcome questions, especially about the 3 in 2 milking if interested and considering a change.

Was Butford trying the 3 in 2 milking, how do people find it

did ye read the interview with Buford in last weeks farmers journal??

I do the 3 in 2 milking for as long as the cows are permanently housed, starting now again next week. Works away grand. 7am, 10pm, 2pm. I do all the feeding and any other jobs on the days with 2 milkings and the other day it's just shove in the silage, ration to the weanlings, milk and be gone. Doesn't seem to affect SCC, yield down a tiny bit. Couldn't go ayr without it tbh. Lie in every second morning, and finished 4pm that day also.

What are they getting it rough?

He has depression and is struggling with the workload of dairying from what I can surmise. It's on the once a day milking thread on F4F.

Bad ongoing TB outbreak, has a very good thread on twitter detailing it all. Hopefully his story helps the department see the other side of it, uncertainty and lack of dealing with badger/ deer sources of outbreaks