4 days ago
Grass quality, reseed progress and finishing up AI in Co. Cork
At a recent Teagasc/Dairygold farm walk in Co. Cork, dairy farmer Tim Leader highlighted how he has been staying ahead of grass quality and how he felt his breeding season has gone to date.
Tim Leader is milking 157 cows this year alongside his wife Mary, daughter Aoife and two sons, John and Paddy, who are all heavily involved on the farm.
Cows are performing well at the moment, producing 28L/cow/day with 3.55% protein and 3.99% fat which equates to 2.16kg milk solids (MS)/cow/day while allocating 15kg of grass dry matter (DM)/cow and 4kg of meal/cow of a 14% crude protein nut.
The Leaders' are farming an 87ha farm, which includes ground for silage and out-blocks. The milking platform consists of 52ha, which means the whole farm is stocked at 2.3 livestock unit (LU)/ha and the milking platform 3.1 LU/ha.
Leader discussing current performance on the farm at the farm walk
This leaves the farm with an organic stocking rate of 194kg of organic nitrogen (N)/ha, which is leaving the farm comfortable in terms of stocking rate limits and facilities, and matches the grass growing ability of the farm.
Grass quality
Leader is a big believer in having cows going into lush, quality covers to drive on milk production during the mid-season. He has carried out plenty of corrective action on paddocks so far this year.
The current average farm cover on the farm is 568kg DM/ha, which is 178kg DM/LU. This is currently leaving a slight dip in his grass wedge, but Leader is not overly worried as growth has been slow up to now.
He is hoping a bit more moisture in the ground will level his grass wedge out, as he aims to go into pre-grazing covers of 1,300kg DM/ha.
With grass growth currently at 54kg DM/ha/day, he is currently running a 23 day rotation to keep quality grass in the diet.
Teagasc/Dairygold Joint Programme adviser, Nora O'Donovan highlighted that grass towards the start of May came under a bit of pressure with the dry spell, which left paddocks heading out and going to stem earlier than usual.
This strain on grass after a spell of quality growth meant that Leader was taking out a paddock for bales every week, as five paddocks altogether were cut and baled, achieving around three bales/ac on each paddock.
A paddock with a cover of about 1,500kg DM/ha that was cut for bales about 23 days ago
However, this corrective action was reduced about a fortnight ago, when grass growth slowed down completely and Leader turned to correcting quality through pre-mowing.
He highlighted that he prefers pre-mowing to topping, as he feels that he is not losing out on regrowths and that the paddock recovery is quicker.
Leader did warn however that he does not pre-mow paddocks to make cows eat high covers with a lot of stem but rather uses this method in the same vein as topping, to correct quality prior to cows grazing.
He mentioned that any paddocks that have not been pre-mowed or cut for bales will be targeted in the next round for some sort of corrective action, preferably cut for bales when grass growth improves.
The stocking rate on the milking platform has dropped as a bit of silage ground is back in the rotation and calves are moved off farm which Leader believes will allow him to correct quality through cutting surpluses for bales in the next rotation.
Clover and reseed
The farm has a clover incorporation of about 22% and the Leaders are reseeding year-on-year, with about 1.5-2kg of clover in each mix.
The Co. Cork farmer is constantly learning how to manage the clover swards. He said a certain paddock had a lovely clover content last year but it was left with a heavy cover over the winter and then grazed in poor conditions, which impacted the clover content severely.
He aims to leave high clover content paddocks with light covers over the winter by grazing them late in autumn and to graze them in good conditions from now on.
Clover inclusion on a fresh reseed
Leader also said that he will spread chemical N as usual on these paddocks in the spring and start decreasing N applications from May onwards.
'That's the ideal,' he added.
He reseeded a paddock this year on April 11 , which is now only a few days away off its first grazing, currently with a cover of about 650kg DM/ha.
The field was sprayed off on April 1 , then ploughed and power harrowed before farmyard manure was spread on it. The paddock was then sown on April 11 and received 2.5 bags/ac of 10-10-20 and lime.
It was then sprayed with a post-emergence spray of ProClova, which has proved successful at killing off the docks though a few thistles persist in the sward.
A look at the freshly reseeded paddock
At the farm walk, Teagasc dairy specialist, Stuart Childs highlighted that there are no products on the market that are effective at killing thistles without killing the clover plant, and said that grazing it down to let the sward tiller should suffocate out the thistle.
Leader hopes to get cows into the field over the next few days. He was advised to just give the grass a pull test beforehand so the whole plant is not pulled during grazing. He intends to top it up with 20 units of N after grazing.
Breeding
The Leaders are five weeks into the breeding season now, and the farmer achieved a 90% submission rate on his cows over 23 days. He got about 14 non-bulling cows scanned for any issues, which led him to synchronise a few of them.
Leader used a team of eight dairy bulls and five beef bulls, in which the best cows based off milk recording data received a dairy straw and the rest recieved a beef straw.
The dairy bull teams weighted average had an economic breeding index (EBI) of €334 with 0.34% fat and 0.22% protein adding up to 32.7kg of milk solids.
The team of bulls averaged €10 in the health sub-index, which is a focus for Leader this year as he mentioned that tuberculosis (TB) is a serious problem in his area.
The Leaders cows out grazing
The beef straws used on the farm have over a €100 beef sub-index within the Dairy Beef Index and are all Angus bulls, as Leader sets his calving difficulty and then tries to maximise the carcass weight.
The herd has an Economic Breeding Index (EBI) of €244 and has a maintenance sub-index of €13, meaning the cows on average weigh about 575kg.
The main emphasis for Leader is to focus on percentages and kg of milk solids, as he does not want to go big on milk due to the nitrates banding and aims to have a 19% replacement rate.
The cows normally produce about 515kg of milk solids through about 6,000L of milk on a normal year. Last year, they produced 476kg MS/cow with 15.77L/cow/day at 4.36% fat and 3.65% protein.
This reduced performance was put down to the bad weather and reduced grass growth.
Leader said he grew 11t of grass last year, which was well back on his usual 12-12.5t of grass DM/ha and fed 1,330kg of meal/cow, which is above his aim of 1,000kg of meal/cow/year.
Leader talking about how the breeding season is progressing
30 heifers on the farm were synchronised a few days into the breeding season and Leader noted that there has not been much activity since, as two bulls have been put in with them to mop up any repeats.
Heat detection is done through tail paint and analysing the paint as cows come in for milking. Artificial insemination (AI) is due to finish up shortly, as stock bulls will run with the herd of cows for the rest of breeding.
Leader will continue to AI cows for about a week after the bulls were let out, to give the bulls time to settle in and so they experience no lull in calving next March.
The Leaders achieved an 80% six-week calving rate this year, with a 371 day calving interval, highlighting the farmers' efficiency in getting cows back in calf.
