12-05-2025
Paula Hynes: From AI to DIY - It's all go on the farm in Aherla
The weather is simply glorious, but the drop of rain in the forecast has been welcome. We held off on spreading fertiliser until we were assured rain and that was down to lessons learned during the summer drought in 2018.
The advice at the time during the drought was to continue to spread fertiliser but with multiple rounds of N spread before we saw rain, grass took a nitrogen surge and we lost a cow to bloat.
The sunshine and heat suits clover swards so they are less affected by the dry weather. We haven't cut any silage yet for the simple reason that we had never planned to cut this early and regardless of the weather conditions being ideal for harvesting, the silage swards are still too high in N so we are keeping an eye on the forecast and hoping for a weather window close to the last week of May.
The main focus on the farm at the moment is breeding season with the main herd being bred, we are lucky to have a fantastic AI technician called David Murphy, he has been a huge part of the team here and always gets fantastic conception rates, and more importantly gives us great feed back on how the cows' heats are.
It really is a team effort getting cows in calf; the technician can only get results if the cow is in good BCS and presented for AI at the right time, and likewise, the technician's attention to detail is also crucial.
We fitted Datamars health and heat detection collars two years ago and they truly have been superb. We knew the system was very accurate and also had the extra confidence that Semex were promoting the system around the world.
We don't tail paint cows anymore which saves a lot of time during milking. We keep an eye on the cows as they leave the paddock to ensure heats we visually see are also picked up by the Datamars system. What we do notice now is that the system picks up silent heats which we possibly would not have seen.
The data available to us on the Datamars app is superb; we can automatically see when the cow calved, when her last heat was or her last AI. It also tells us when the heat for the cow began, when the optimum time for AI is and when the heat will finish; with this information we can decide if a cow will be served in the AM or PM.
Generally, we try to serve cows which are selected for sexed semen as late in the heat as possible, but if a cow is being served with beef semen we can be more flexible with the time of service, so if possible we may serve earlier or later to reduce the daily visits for the technician.
We will stop using sexed semen soon so we will return to once a day AI and we will continue to serve with beef semen until week 10 of breeding. We don't use stock bulls anymore as conception rates are higher to AI and we never have to worry about the fertility of stock bulls. I guess there is also the safety aspect of it that with no stock bulls with the dairy herd anyone can bring the cows in for milking.
The Datamars collars also give us great information on the health of individual cows, if a cow is off form we will get a health alert and we can automatically look at the data on the cow's rumination, standing time, resting, lying down and feeding time. If we need veterinary intervention for the cow, we can give this information to the vet and rule out problems quicker.
The system really is like having a pair of eyes and ears with the cows 24 hours a day and while systems like this are costly, we save a lot of time and routine costs. Also with the benefit of having more cows in calf and calving earlier, it means the herd is more efficient and more profitable.
The list of cows which have not been served has really narrowed down, not every cow has a 21-day cycle and we also take into consideration how late a cow has calved, but we will PG a few cows this week to bring on their heat and give them the best chance of going in calf again.
The farm always requires some routine maintenance, and the summer months are a chance to tackle some of these jobs, for those who know our farm, we have a long tarmac driveway and it has been riddled with potholes. Pete claimed that while some places had speed ramps, we merely had speed holes.
Well, the speed holes are no more, which must come as a huge celebration for the postman and the milk lorry driver as we got a load of hot tarmac this week and tackled the repair job.
Next on the maintenance list is a building project which has also begun and hopefully once complete will make life a lot easier for us. It is something we are taking our time with as we will most likely modify it as we are making progress and as it begins to take shape I will write a more detailed piece on it.
The summer always flies by and I always think it is better tackling these jobs earlier rather than rushing around in the autumn. While we may seem extremely organised, to be fair the current farm maintenance list is probably the 2024 list which never happened and has been slightly updated since and we did need to allow Pete a little time to realise that his speed pothole concept was never going to become popular with visitors.
There is also a little fencing that needs upgrading in fields which are closed for silage, so once first-cut silage is complete we will tackle that rather than rushing around repairing it in the autumn when we need to graze after grass after second cut silage.
As the list of maintenance jobs grows, so too does the visitor list which will make farm and home busy for the next couple of months.
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