David's going Dairying.

Hello everyone, I wasn't on here much since my last post because it was all go. I have plenty to post but not sure if I want to bore ye too much. The boluses are in 5 weeks, I am delighted with them. The reason I picked them over other options was the information it give you. It measures rumination, temperature, water intake, movement. It can tell you if a cow is sick, calving, bullying, if she has reproductive issues like cysts on the ovaries. It has been accurate on all of these so far. The app and website are easy to use, you have good back up, rolling warranty and the up front cost isn't as severe as the other options. I couldn't fault other systems but I just found this system ticked most of the boxes for me.

There has few been ups and downs the last while. One cow failed a TB blood test so I'm restricted since mid April. I'm hoping to pass the TB test in June as there was no lesions seen on her lungs. 30 ac of ground has been reseed two weeks ago, I'm into my third week of breeding, I have a few repeats so far but nothing too concerning yet. Myself and a few friends did it between us. It's the first time since 1998 since there was a pit of grass silage here. A few people said would I not get in a proper outfit but everything went well and we all knocked a bit of craic out of the day too which is the main thing. I made 180 bales of red clover silage and grass silage back in early May.

I'd like to see rain in the next week or so as grass is starting to go stemmy. If the ground doesn't get too dry I'll make a start at the water system. I was going to get a company in to do it but the cost was eye watering and I still had to put out the tanks and level them which is the hardest job, so I decided to do it all ourselves. 

Hello everyone. It has been a while since I updated this thread. 2023 was a challenging year with weather, finances and a few other bits but I survived it intact. I milked 106 cows last year, I am hoping to calf 112 cows to calf this year provided nothing else happens. I am disappointed with the amount of empty cows in 2023. It worked out at 12%, on top of that two cows died Christmas Eve, I had two other cows that lost their calves, the results from one of the calves came back with Schmallenberg and the other calf showed nothing unusual.

The cows averaged 272 days in milk, they produced 5237 kgs of milk, the total solids came to 423 kgs and the average SCC was 117,000. I fed the cows around 900 kgs of concentrates for 2023. The calving interval for 2023 was 375 days. If I’m being honest I shot myself in the foot in June during the mini drought. I made cows graze stemmy grass instead of baling it and zero graze in red clover grass The cows are in good condition, out to grass most days and some nights. I had a few cases of sub clinical milk fever and lost two calves because of it. I blood tested some cows and I’m waiting on the results.

There's plenty of work to get done out in fields but after all this rain I’ll have to wait another while. I’m starting to look at AI catalogues at the moment and planning on using more sexed semen and crossing more Friesian cows with Norwegian Reds and then crossing them with a Montbeliarde. I want to increase KGs of milk solids and fertility but I don’t want to use jerseys. It’s hard enough to sell calves at the moment and the minute buyers hear the mention of jerseys they won’t touch them.  I’m thinking of trying out a brassica crop in one of the paddocks so the cows can graze it, if the place gets dry. I’ll stick up a few pictures later. How’s the spring going with ye?

The first picture is of the first three way cross heifer calf born.

Second picture is of some of the heifer calves out of WWS straws. The bulls used were Conway, Lunser and Renegade.

Third picture is of the calves in their individual pens for the first few days. We used broken tines off the tedder and some box iron to hold up the rope for the heat lamps.

Hello everyone, hope ye are doing alright with this tricky weather. It’s not too easy to plan ahead at the moment. I just wanted to update ye on how things are going here. It’s a sunny day so far after a heavy night’s rain. We put 70ac of silage in a pit yesterday, it was a mixture of first cut and some heavy paddocks. The spring went well for us, while the weather made things difficult. The cows calved fine, all the calves were healthy and we had very few issues with sickness across the herd. There were two still births during the spring. I still have one cow dragging her heels and didn’t calf yet but she’s due in the next two weeks. We have ten of the thirty water troughs in and another bit of land fenced.

I have an Angus and a Herefod bull with the heifers to take the pressure off breeding. Seventy-five percent of the herd have been served in the first three weeks of breeding. I went with some more straws from WWS, Norwegian Red and Montbeliarde straws from Dovea. Cows are in good condition, they are getting 4.5kgs of meal in the parlor. The most recent milk test results show the cows doing 25 litres of milk at 1.95kgs of milk solids per cow. Grazing has been hard to manage the last while with the cows having to graze heavier covers because of ground conditions. Recently I sprayed off a field and set a breed of stubble turnip called “Skyfall”. I got it off DLF, its starting to grow but I don’t think I’ll be grazing it in three weeks time. I tried it out just to see if it would work as a break crop or if we get dry grazing conditions.

While I haven’t been posting on boards a lot recently I have been following the dairy chit chat thread and saw some commenting on mental health so I decided to speak briefly about my personal life. Since January my mam has being back on chemo therapy and has been in and out of hospital during February and March but thankfully she’s doing well now. My aunt passed away at the end of April which was tough. Last week my partners father also passed away. Both people had died because of cancer. They will dearly missed by both families and myself. I saw my partners father as a mentor who I would go to for advice on a weekly basis as well as my own father. He was onto me previously about joining the ICMSA, so I think I may do it.

The last few weeks have been tough mentally and emotionally but I am very lucky to have some good friends who offered to help out when I was in need. It has shown that family and friends are important and to try not to let things build up internally. Not to be afraid to look for help, to shed a tear or to show your emotions from time to time.

Yes it's her sister, my father is an only child.

Going into a field of stock and just watching them is great therapy. I think the calves are my favourite, but it's hard to beet looking at a nice herd of cows and they are all lying down in the sun.

I'm organising a trip for my discussion group up North for the middle of July. We'll be staying around Cookstown for two nights the 16th and 17th.

I have most of it planned but I'm looking for suggestions, ideas or even maybe an invite onto a farm if possible 😁 there's 16 of us in the group. Thanks

Yes, we're visiting him. A friend of mine up there got me in contact with him.