Creating a pasture wedge

Farmers are encouraged to use nitrogen and pasture management to make sure you have enough pasture in front of your cows to feed them well through July and August or create a wedge of pasture for calving cows.

Gibberellic acid may be a useful addition to increase pasture growth rates, if needed and conditions are suitable (cold air and soil temperatures).

Now that most broad leafed weeds, like capeweed and erodium, have struck control them with appropriate herbicides before they grow too large.

If you farm on wet soils expect some wastage of pasture through pugging and take this into account when you allocate pasture to cows.

If you have plenty of pasture in front of cows you can speed up the rotation for short periods of wet soil conditions to protect pasture from pugging.

You can also use on-off grazing and stand-off areas such as feed pads and dairy yards if soils become very wet.

Cow health

Plan your transition diet for calving cows. The aims are to ensure the cow’s energy and protein requirements are met, and introduce grain to the diet if it is required.

A properly-formulated lead feed ration or the use of anionic salts in the water troughs should be considered to assist in prevention of milk fever.

Even a low level of milk fever in the herd has many flow-on effects including calf losses during calving, retained foetal membrane and calving paralysis.

Keep in mind your calving paddocks would be best if they are sheltered and on a welldrained soil type. Change the paddock when it becomes muddy or dirty with manure to avoid mastitis.

Mastitis can be managed in many dairy cows, some don’t respond to treatment, removing cows with chronic infections reduces the bacterial challenge to other unaffected cows and helps to protect the herd.

Monitor the dairy herd for lameness and treat promptly, the use of foot mats in the entrance to the platform may be useful.

Replacement heifers/calves

Feeding calves and young stock for a great future in the herd needs to be done well.

This money spent can be a good investment if young stock are well enough grown to produce well after calving, get back in calf and last a long time in the herd.

Calf rearing plans are important and should be made to ensure the highest possible rate of survival and healthy growth.

Young stock are often put on an out block and assumed to be fed well from pasture during the autumn and winter periods, however, this is often not the case and young stock growth rates can be lower than expected during this period.

This pasture feeding needs focus to ensure young stock grow well through this period.

Financial

Budgets need to be monitored in order to be effective. Review costs and income for this year and understand what effected the budget this year.

Complete an annual budget for the 2016/17 year based off this year’s costs and next year’s expected opening prices.

A cash flow budget can be completed once the industry has an opening price. Predict your spring cash flow and consider your strategies for feeding cows well over a period of high expenditure.