Farmer Focus Livestock: Jim Dwyer is determined to reduce mastitis

Up to the end of October we were grazing heavy covers, which made life easier. However, changing weather conditions in November has made grazing more difficult.

Nevertheless, we have gone through most of our heavy grass and have made optimum use of it now.

In the first week of October we dried off first lactating animals, animals giving less than 0.6kg milk solids, lame animals and ones with a body condition score of three or less.

This year any cow with a cell count above 500,000 is getting a long-acting dry cow antibiotic and a teat seal. The rest of the cows are getting an ordinary dry cow antibiotic and they are also getting teat seal.

We are using teat seal this year as we feel too many cows calved down with mastitis and by using it, research has shown mastitis can be reduced by 30%.

Last month’s weather also gave us an opportunity to fence the 53 acres we leased last year. We put the whole area into 1ha paddocks with a cow track running right through the farm. This will enable us to manage grass better and also allow one man to handle stock there at any time. Our intention is to keep most of our youngstock there next year and that will allow us milk more cows on our home block.

Once again it is frustrating to have to deal with spreading dates for slurry and farm yard manure. We have had a lot of grass and little bare area to spread the dirty woodchip on from the pad. In a year such as this when grass grows so well into the autumn is it not more environmentally friendly to have cows out grazing this grass and being able to postpone the spreading of woodchip when weather is suitable later in the autumn?

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