Cows, calves and veterinary

Dry cows

The 'Winter grazing' was finished two days ago and both herds are back this side of the road, going through paddocks that were laxly grazed by the milkers at the end of May.
The season has been kind so far - the rain has been light and there is very little pug damage. The paddocks that the cows will be in for the next three weeks were all badly damaged this time last year by grazing in heavy rain.
The deferred grass across the road was grazed off at between 3600 and 4100 kg DM/ha, and the cows only needed 0.15 - 0.2 of a hectare each herd - or about 25 square metres a cow, with 2 kg DM per cow fed out of hay.
The grass the cows are going into ranges from 2500 - 3100 kg DM/ha, with the grass ahead at 3500 - 3700 kg DM - the main purpose of putting them into the shorter grass is to clean out the long stuff they left on the last grazing rotation, ensuring quality regrowth for milking on. Also, these paddocks have had high effluent loading and can't be considered safe for newly dry cows, calving cows, colostrum cows - and even milking cows can get into metabolic trouble on them through spring. This is the best time to hard-graze them.

Number 12 has been gradually springing (preparing to calve) for several days. She's not due unitl the end of July - I have my doubts that she'll hang on for that long.

This particular patch of ground was the edge of one of the breaks last year, and was completely churned up by the cows during heavy rain. Although the paddock was re-seeded in October, it's obvious growth is still sparse in these heavily damaged areas a year later.

The bucket and scoop are my high-tech magnesium spreading device. Blood testing in the autumn showed the cows were deficient in magnesium, and they've been getting MgO dusted on their silage at the rate of 50g/cow/day ever since. With calving approaching I've doubled the rate over the last week, and since they're on smaller breaks the whole break gets dusted. The dust clings to the wet grass, as seen in the photo above.

posted by nellta holdings @ 2:54 PM