67
Sixty-seven is doing her best to convince me that it was a totally wrong decision making sure her momma only had little beefie heifers.
Sixty-three herself is daily trying to convince me of that too :-)
Did I say there was a story there? Oh yeah, well, 63 will be checked in another month or so to make sure she *is* carrying a wee beefie calf.
She's a large crossbred cow, good milker, lots of attitude - which translates at times to turning half a row of cows upside down just because she feels like it, kicking my hand away if I want to check her milk before putting cups on - that sort of thing. Well, I've got a lot of equally good milkers with much nicer attitudes and there's a high heritability for temperament, so 63 very quickly got herself on the 'mate to Angus only' list.
Sixty-seven is her daughter from their old farm, since her previous owner hadn't put her on such a list. She has no temperament issues, at all. But not yet such a good milker either. Funny how that happens - my 61 is a Hugo grand-daughter with only about half the nasty temperament her mother had but also about half of her milking ability too; her mother (PWD's 96) would have been best heifer in her first year, probably best 3-yr old too the following year.
(Yeah, that's the best image of 63 I've got at this stage. Her daughter is the red cow on her left)
So anyway, the mating information had finally come through onto Mindapro and the first thing I noticed was that the first cow on the 'expected calving by date' list was a heifer who had been bulling (and had every mating recorded, and passed on to LIC) right up until the begining of January.
So I went through that list and my records, and the sad story is that LIC had allowed 9 errors through that did not relate to the information I had sent them.
A further two errors were because I hadn't given them the information. One was a heifer with a late cycle that wasn't mated. The other was number 63, who had no mating recorded.
I turned back to the date she'd supposedly been mated on (according to my records) in the AB book and there found, written directly onto the back page (not the white one that gets sent to LIC) '63 wasted straw - Te Maniu'.
And then I remembered. During my first week of DIY AB, 63 was one of those extremely deep, stroppy cows - after several attempts to get the semen through a cervix I couldn't even reach, (in the course of which a straw landed on the ground and got stood on), it had been another case of 'practically there', she'd started bouncing around again and the inseminator had slipped back out, I decided I'd had enough, let the contents of the straw go where-ever they happened to be and decided she wasn't even bulling anyway and I'd draft her again in a few days when she came on properly.
And since I didn't think she'd been properly on heat to start with and certainly wouldn't get in calf, I didn't record it for LIC as a mating - simply as a wasted straw for my own records.
Somehow, I must have forgotten to look out for her - because I didn't notice that she never came back on heat.
The PD will tell all, calving next year will verify. There's three possibilities - a) she's empty and not cycling, b) she's in calf to a vigorous (or lucky) piece of DNA from one of those 'wasted' straws or c) she only had 'silent' heats and then the bull got her in calf when I wasn't looking.
Since I don't believe in big healthy cows like 63 being anoestrus or having silent heats, 'b' is most likely.
On the other hand, she did get herself on the PD list late in the season for being seen in company with a bulling cow so...
Where the water went
You weren't
wondering why you'd been replacing so many broken trough arms lately, were you?
142 cows. Two troughs (both are empty). Four hours since feeding out two bales of silage + parking the molasses.
Cows on once a day milking. Cell count jumped to 132,000. Photos taken since yesterday am - 102.
Uh-oh.
The trouble with dogs...
And cows
Is that they will keep wandering in front of the viewfinder
and ruining my pictures of grass and sky!
Feeding molasses
While I can think of about fifty reasons for not feeding molasses this way, there's no doubt it works.
The tank, and a load of molasses arrived nearly a fortnight ago, when I knew I wouldn't see the purpose-built trailer for a long time yet - but the cows were short of feed
right now.
So out came the calf feeders, I dumped about twenty litres of molasses in each and parked them in front of the milking bails at the shed. And waited to see what would happen.
Well, some of the older cows recognised molasses, and were keen to feed immediately. 62 (who was bulling this morning :( ) was the first to discover that the troughs *moved*, as she dragged one across the concrete five minutes later, before realising she had to lower her head to back out.
The newly rowed up row thought it was a good time to all turn round and try to run away.
By the end of milking, the troughs were being gaily dragged and pushed and not a cow flinched. Believe it or not, cows are very adaptable. The hay racks had both been removed by the third row to reduce the chance of heads and ears getting caught, and to allow more space. I thought I could expect a maximum of two cows each side, in fact, by about the second day I was starting to see three cows at once with their heads in one side of the calf trough.
It worked better than I expected. While the cows were capable of tipping up (or literally throwing around) the full troughs, they didn't - I only once had to rescue a spillage, and that on the first morning. Only about half of each row could feed at once, but they would take what they wanted and then move on, allowing those that had been hanging back in hope to move in. The biggest issue was not over-filling either trough, because then the bike would struggle to drag them across the rough metal of the tanker track, and there would be molasses left in the troughs for morning milking.
This worked until about the fifth day. The previous night I'd seen 63 (a first row cow - and she's another story altogether!) still hanging around the troughs as I let the third row out. She got sent away, and didn't come back, but the following evening her backside was black and so I sent her on before she'd had more than a taste. But she came back. And back. And back. And finally I got fed up forestalling her before she got more than halfway back up the exit race, and shut the gate. Ever since then, each row has been let out into the enclosed area, the gate opened and the row moved on before the next row is let out. It's time consuming, and an absolute pain when drenching as well but it ensures that no individual cow has longer than five minutes with the troughs.
A hard-core group of about five first-row cows (the ones that really wanted molasses had started all coming in the first row) would hang around on the other side of the gate - they did this for about three milkings before it finally sunk in that they wasn't getting any more.
The troughs are filled in the morning before the once a day cows are brought in. Until this morning (about twelve days after starting feeding) I haven't had to stop any of the OAD herd from feeding, because not all that many take it and those that do, don't hang around. Usually the sixty cows dropped the level in the troughs by about twenty litres, the twice a day cows would then feed at night and if there was any left in the morning, the first rows through got a bonus feed.
Not all cows feed, and there still isn't room for all of them to. I suspect that wheras formerly some of the shyer cows simply waited their turn, now that each row gets five minutes and no more, there are cows that will drink for the full time. And others that probably would like to feed but don't push in.
*If* there were room for a full row of cows to feed at once and an automatic ushering system, this would be close to ideal. An immovable trough twelve cows long, non-slip walking surface, automatic gate opening and an intelligent sweeper gate to 'persuade' reluctant cows to move on - and life'd be sweet. Oh, and of course the troughs would be self-filling.
As it is, I can see when the proper trough does arrive I'll have to sit there in the paddock with it, waving a big stick at the ones that've had enough. That'll be fun :) Getting out of the gate with it without half a herd of cows a whole 'nother issue.
You can tell when the troughs empty in the morning. It's no exaggeration to say that the cows pick them up and throw them around. And not a cow flinches at the noise - they amaze me.
Drawbacks: there's about fifty reasons why this isn't a good idea.
* Slippery concrete - the cows are jostling each other on smooth concrete, and every once in a while half a cow tumbles down the pit steps. It's only time before an injury occurs.
* Mess: both in the feeding area, and in the shed as waiting cows watch the previous rows feeding (and then have to wait half a minute longer while the area is cleared for them). The water pressure the way it is now, cleaning up the mess that results from feeding molasses in the yard means there's hardly any water left to clean the rest of the yard.
*Unsuitable troughs: Plastic calf troughs were never intended for use by half ton cows (or dragging across metal with 50 - 60 litres of molasses in them).
* Oh yeah, and me - I don't think I was designed to drag those troughs the final distance the bike won't take them either. And there's no question that a larger bike wouldn't be able to fit into that space at all.
* Lack of trough space: meaning not all the cows can get a fair feed
* and lack of moving space: meaning there *must* be a rope up behind the row, because there's little chance of being able to shut the gate cleanly after the last cow otherwise.
* Too much time - even five minutes probably allows certain cows (62, 63, 78, 132, 35, 133, 143...) to take far more than their share. The aim is to give them around a litre a cow. I don't want to guess how much a big cow like 78 can drink when she has her head in the trough for four or five minutes. Two minutes would be better.
I did say fifty, didn't I? Well, since the noise apparently doesn't bother them and they've never started throwing around the full troughs (it is, however, quite a sight when three cows are feeding alongside and one of them pulls back without lowering her head so that the whole lot - cows and trough - skedaddle back in unison) that's all I can think of right now. It takes about twenty minutes between herds in the morning to fill the troughs and get them in place.
79
Time for milking
All the bad news
Translation: Whole herd goes on once a day from Monday
subtext: 15 kg DM per hectare per day growth since last walk.
Which is much better than the previous walk, which recorded zero growth over the previous seven days.
Conclusion: New Zealand cows are renowned for milking on fresh air. Well, we've been doing the 'controlled starvation' game for a fortnight. I estimate in another fortnight we'll be trying out the 'fresh air' theory.
19 says eczema is no fun
so does 131
and 59
80 is calm - as long as no-one touches her udder
118 looked great a week ago.
This morning she walked into the milking bail backwards. She thought that would get her out of milking.
The really bad news: 5% clinical means at least 50% subcinical (liver-damaged)
The better news: All of these cows are from the once a day herd. The remaining almost two-thirds of the farm's bovine population are in good health and milking well.
The best news: There's watery stuff falling from the sky.
Remember 98/99 season? Apart from one farm I worked on (which thought 4 Friesians for every hectare was efficient management), that is the last time I saw facial eczema. Weather-wise, there are a number of similarities - it was a hard year. I spent that year as an itinerant milker, hanging out with hungry cows and some appalling pasture management through the late spring and early summer, during which time the storm hit that killed the electricity for up to three days to some areas, across the country.
The next few farms I went to were still struggling with SCC and mastitis, weeks and months later.
Spent the early New Year roasting on the Hauraki Plains watching the grass not grow.
Fed out maize silage in Te Awamutu in March.
Grubbing thistles on a farm in Northland when a cow with eczema and an infected horn walked out of the forest - then turned round and walked back in. "She's still on her feet then," commented the farm owner when I mentioned her.
Watched a herd of Friesians on once a day drop from 5 litres a cow to 3 litres over the space of a week in April. The farm owner then cancelled the scheduled herd test.
Heh - I was trying to remember where I was in February. Falling out of peach trees and off a two-wheel motorbike and impressing the sharemilker with the ability to pick a mastitis cow out of the herd. Ended up full-time there the following season.
Until about a week ago, I would have said this wasn't the worst drought I'd farmed through. But that's because I remember 98/99 (another La Nina) and because most of the intervening years have been spent on farms with a stocking rate closer to 4 than 3.
There's no doubt that when the weather isn't in favour it's a lot more comfortable at a lower stocking rate. Eventually, nil grass growth will catch up with the lower-stocked guys (especially if their grazing rotations are on the short side), but the lower feed demand and probable increased pasture cover carried over from previous grazings will buffer the deficit somewhat.
At high stocking rates, one or two years out of every three the stock will suffer the effects of drought. Most years the rain arrives early enough to save the day.
One year in ten, one year in thirty, one in a hundred (the number's been getting progressively higher); it doesn't.
It hasn't this year for us, anyway. Too late for parts of the Waikato. And it's barely mid-Feb.
metservice
It's just started drizzling again.
A few days ago I was timing the rain. I think we had three showers of less than a minute, one of nearly five minutes.
Better than nothing.
edited to add link:
Facial Eczema of sheep and cattle (pdf)*nod* to the googler whose backlinks led to that page.
17 Feb - we got rain, decent rain. Don't know how much yet, but a week earlier would have been nice... looking forward to next farm walk.
Drought management and fun figures
MAF: learning from previous dry spells pdf file (I try to mark those because they take a lo-ong time to load on dial-up, just in case anyone wondered)
Managing animal welfare risks this summerNote:
I've also received information of cow deaths following the feeding of tapioca or molasses 'inappropriately' (in a situation where hungry cows can gorge, resulting in severe acidosis). Some of these cases occured on farms almost wholly reliant on supplementary feed - there are parts of the country far worse off than here.
More tips If you're a NZ farmer and read the papers, you've already seen that article half a dozen times.
Dairy farmers have been off-loading culls for a week or two now. The works are busy and reports are starting to come through of delays in some areas (Fed Farmers, Feb 5 Rural News).
I was so tempted the other day to phone my works agent and see if he could squeeze in a second cow along with the one I was already sending with the bull (late calver, poor temperament). My only known (older) empty cow had just begun a mild flare-up of mastitis. It was only the day before the truck was due, and I decided against - she's milking well and SCC isn't a great issue in my herd.
This morning she turned up at the shed fidgeting and holding milk. Eczema. Now I *really* wish I'd checked out the possibility of her going the other day.
Being an early dry, and with the bull just come out, I've already scuppered the plans I made last year to quit stock around this time because apparently eveything is in calf. A total of *three* cows have been seen cycling since Jan 10th, two of them in the herd that wasn't running with a bull.
There are no obvious poor performers to pick out of the herd (though I have a short list in mind if culling of capital stock does become necessary; since there's some rain due over the next few days, hopefully that can be avoided) and I've already been contacted by someone interested in buying empty young cows - at this stage, a total of one.
As always, I'm wondering whether the change in feed composition and quantity has affected the cycling cows. Twenty cows went up for AB in the three weeks leading to Jan 10, two or three more were seen on heat but left to the bull. Eighty per cent 3 wk NRR just ain't normal.
Time will prove one way or the other. Vet statistics for the past few years in this area show empty rates averaging 10 - 12%, about where we were last year.
Some interesting figure work. This data comes from the current season's herd tests. If I was clever I'd import it as a table, but I'm not clever and I'm not about to reveal the real time of morning (it's not what the time stamp says, it is late enough to preclude any and all effort).
25 cows milked once daily since early December Average of current herd test: 0.64 kg MS, cumulative for lactation: 181 kg MS, range: 90 - 267 kgMS
35 cows put on once daily milking immediately after test - picked on udder appearance for low yield Average of current herd test: 0.89 kg MS, cumulative for lactation: 227 kg MS, range: 75 - 290 kg MS (note - the 75 is an anomaly - late calver, looks as if she's milking not bad but has tested pathetically both times)
19 heifers grazed with really good grazier last year Average of current herd test: 0.73 kg MS, cumulative for lactation: 190 kg MS, range: 137 - 222 kgMS
25 heifers grazed with less-skilled grazier last year Average of current herd test: 0.7 kg MS, cumulative for lactation: 191 kg MS, range: 90 - 269 kgMS
134 cows with a BW of 150 or below Average of current herd test: 0.96 kg MS, cumulative for lactation: 233 kg MS, range: 75 - 339 kgMS
85 cows with a BW of 151 or above Average of current herd test: 0.96 kg MS, cumulative for lactation: 235 kg MS, range: 158 - 352 kgMS
13 cows with uncertain or no ancestry records Average of current herd test: 1.05 kg MS, cumulative for lactation: 245 kg MS, range: 184 - 327 kgMS
This is consistent with other individual herd tests I've checked. The once daily cows are picked out for low yield, and this was their first test (the first group) on once a day milking. Without going into a detailed analysis - I suspect the heifers are doing slightly less (between 0.1 and 0.2 kg MS) than they would be had they stayed on twice a day. A few of the cows are achieving good yields while on once a day, and a surprising number are achieving good yields while wandering into the shed with a slack udder every milking.
There is no significant difference between the heifers that were well-grown and those that came home small and fat.
There is no significant difference in production between low BW and high BW cows. It might be interesting to look at that lower end figure - taking out number 82 to see if there are more low BW cows who are poor producers. At a quick glance over the figures, I suspect there isn't much difference there either.
And as always - the mongrels lead the pack! By a
huge margin.
I'll give LIC the benefit of the doubt that that might be an anomaly. It's a small number of cows, some of them have no ancestry information at all, others have uncertain parentage, a couple I bought as unrecorded, one I know for sure was the result of a natural mating - cow age and breed composition possibly gives this group an advantage over the herd average.
Fun food for hungry cows
When the rye-grass gets short, cows love elephant grass:
and flax
Because after all, a soft wire and batten 'fence' has
never stopped a determined bovine.
Willow and poroporo was on the menu too, along with boxthorn.
But then they got told, 'no more', and shut in a boring paddock of ryegrass 'cos I didn't fancy pulling cows out of the swamp the next morning.
Into the dry
Below: grass that has had dairy effluent on it, grazed about two weeks ago.
Today's grazing, before pm milking. The cows are going in at 2800 kg DM/ha (summer scale, 8 cm), grazing down to 3 - 4 cm and getting a bale of silage daily. There are 95 cows in this group, still on twice a day milking and given 0.93 hectare daily - representing about 11.5 kg DM a cow.
Sixty cows are on once a day milking, given 0.6 ha daily and no silage.
Below: tomorrow's ration
The farm has had about 20 mm rain for the whole of January. It's an early dry, following through from an exceptionally dry November and moderate rain in December. We're not so badly off as some - controlled starvation (ie, the current ration) will keep the cows milking for the next fortnight and the silage is of excellent quality. There's a two week delay in getting tanks/troughs for molasses feeding and a rumour of a shortage - all feeds are under pressure right now, between the increased milk price (which makes supplementary feed more economic) and the prolonged and early dry spell. I'm hopeful that molasses will offset the grass shortage somewhat, and that the weather forecasters are as inaccurate as experience suggests they will be (as they've been saying for weeks not to expect much rain before April).
January breaks heat records
dry to continue
Pain
I took these photos a few days ago. This is 108, a two year old Jersey. At the time I didn't know what was wrong with her - but it was obvious that she was in a great deal of pain.
Presenting symptoms: Milk drop.
A few days after her milk had dropped the condition had melted off her. I checked her head and mouth, for dehydration. Her eyes looked normal at that stage, and when I watched her in the paddock she was grazing, cudding, keeping up with the herd. The next day her eyes half-closed in the way they are in the photo (but not 'sunken' as is typical of dehydration). I also noticed a slight scour.
A few more days passed in which she got neither better nor worse, and since I had no likely diagnosis from my own observations, I got a vet to have a look at her.
In the image above, have a look along her side.
The bulge along her ribs is more obvious in the image below. She has a cracked rib. It's possible that all of her symptoms - milk drop, scour, harsh lung noise, unusual stance and extended neck - are due to pain. It's going to take a while longer to be certain that there is no other, underlying cause for her condition.
This new photo was taken the day after she started a course of anti-inflammatory (flunixin) and amoxycillin (in case of lung infection - it's possible that the broken rib has pierced a lung). She is already much more relaxed.
With the pain under control and avoiding situations where she could be pushed about (yarding with the herd) she should spend more time grazing and regain the lost condition.
Time will tell.
It's not all that unusual for cows to sustain broken ribs, but it is unusual for any outward symptoms to be seen. As a rule, cattle are good at hiding pain.
I have a suspicion that the nature of this particular break is causing the problems - the broken ends of the bone must be moving enough to cause the inflammation that has resulted in the haematoma over the damaged area.
edit, 8 Feba week later:
Sixty-seven is doing her best to convince me that it was a totally wrong decision making sure her momma only had little beefie heifers.
