Cows, calves and veterinary

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.

posted by nellta holdings @ 1:42 AM