Friday, March 29, 2024
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Galway
HomeBeef‘With marts closed, it’s been difficult to move beef calves and cull...
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‘With marts closed, it’s been difficult to move beef calves and cull cows off-farm’

Christy McCarthy and family milk 55 cows (35 pedigree Holsteins and 25 pedigree Jerseys) on 60-acres in Balineen, Co. Cork.

Performance: Fat:4.27; Protein: 3.78; Lactose: 4.82; SCC: 251; TBC: 17.

Update

Spring-calving is all wrapped up now as of the weekend. We will have three cows calving in July again, but the main group of cows will be in October with 25 cows calving in this month as of scanning last month.

As you can see, butterfat has taken a bit of a dive and to combat this, I will cut up straw in the diet feeder and put it out in the cowshed feed passage. They can eat as much as they want at milking time.

I would like to see TBC a little low and I will put a few more hot washes through the parlour. The SCC problem has been identified in a freshly-calved cow in March and is being treated at the moment.

Cows are out day and night for about two weeks now which has seen a nice increase in protein.

As cows go around the farm, all fence post and wire are being replaced and they have seen better days. With marts closed, it’s been difficult to move beef calves and cull cows off-farm but, hopefully, the calves will leave next week.

Next week

That’s it this week folks – Next week, I will be telling you about the breeding plan for the year ahead.

Please follow government guidelines on Covid-19 and please practice hand-washing – do everything that you can to stop the spread of this terrible pandemic!

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