Shinagh Dairy Farm Report 23-3-2011
This Week’s Priorities
Ensure all dairy heifer calves are BVD tested using enfer tags.
Use Mayo Health Care teat seal on all heifers springing down to calf, repeat every 3
to 5 days as necessary to help keep teat ends clean and prevent early mastitis.
California Milk Test (CMT) all cows 4 days after calving and before the milk is
allowed into the tank.
Only allow cows that pass the CMT test into the tank
Pick out the 5 lowest condition score cows and put them in the once a day (OAD)
group to start putting on condition in plenty of time for breeding
Get farm roadway strips re-seeded this week
Tail paint all cows for pre-breeding heat detection.
Adhere to Spring Rotation Plan in allocating grass to cows
Grass Details
There is 73.63ha on the home farm available for cow grazing this spring. The farm is
on budget (see attached budget) at a farm cover of 520 kg/DM/Ha. As you can see our
stocking rate on the cow ground will be 2.69 heifers / ha. If heifers have a 15% lower
intake than a mature herd this equates to 2.3 mature cows per hectare. Growth rate last
week was 25 kg/DM/Ha. If growth stays inline with our predicted rates then we are on
target to hit magic day next week. Cows go to grass day and night as soon as they
calve. They have been out every day and night since Feb 1 (except 2 nights). 56.9 ha
(77%) of the farm has been grazed in line with our spring planner target. Cows are
getting 1.5 kgs of meal per day which gives them cover for grass tetany. The herd is
going into covers of 1000 and grazing to 3.5-4 cm in these excellent grazing
conditions. 15.6 ha is fresh reseeded ground last autumn getting its first grazing. Some
of these paddocks have been challenging to graze out well due to the high levels of
chickweed and hempnettle in them.
Calving
Calving is going to plan. There is 179 cows calved, 90% of the herd (179 calved out
of 199 expected to calve). The 6 week calving rate was 86%.
Breeding Heifers
45 Breeding heifers have been sourced and are being blood tested prior to transport to
the farm. They will go to grass immediately on arrival on the outside farm (Gurteen
farm 33.2 ha). The breeding plan for these heifers is to bring them onto the home farm
tail paint all heifers and AI them on observed heat for 7 days. Any heifers not bred in
those 7 days will get a PG injection and will be bred to observed heat over the next 4
days. All the heifers will then be returned to Gurteen with an easy calving stock bull
to pick up any repeats.
Nitrogen
Two bulk applications of 0.75 bags of urea per acre has been spread on the home farm
to date. This brings the total nitrogen to 70 units per acre spread to date. Soiled water
from the milking parlour yard has been spread mainly on the silage ground. Any dung
on the farm has been spread on the land that was in beet last year (rented out in 2010)
and this ground is ready for ploughing and reseeding as soon as possible.
Milk Solids
The herd produced 7.67kg of milk solids per cow in Feb. (total solids produced
divided by all cows, 198). Current milk yield is 17 litres per cow in the tank per day at
4.33% Fat and 3.43% protein (1.36kgs of milk solids a day) and SCC of 268. On the
basis that heifers milk 78% of a mature cow this is the equivalent of a mature herd
milking 21.75 litres per day (1.74kgs of milk solids a day).
Milk Quality
We are not happy with the SCC count level, which is varying between 94,000 and
277,000. These are all clean heifers calving down for the first time and our target SCC
count is 100,000 for the year. An extra care programme is in place to address this
issue. This consists of the following:

Extra cleaning of cubicle beds and cubicle passages in the cow house

Using Stalosan F cubicle disinfectant routinely

Calving boxes cleaned out weekly and disinfected with stalosan F powder.

Teat dipping all cows 5-10 days precalving with Mayo Health Care teat barrier

All fresh calved and high SCC cows are kept in a separate group and milked after the
main herd (to prevent any cross infection of clean cows)

The cluster is dipped in food safe disinfectant (Cluster) between milking each of the cows
in this group

All cows have to pass the CMT test before they are allowed into the main herd.
We are monitoring the SCC count continuously and the text message out from the Coop is proving very useful in this regard. Milk samples have been analysed for the bugs
causing the infections without any conclusive results except to point the source
towards the environment. The number of heifers with actual mastitis is low and at this
stage we think we have the issue under control