Farmer Focus Livestock: Clyde Jones takes a trip out
On a recent family day out to King Alfred’s Tower over looking Avon, Wiltshire and Somerset I lamented the complete absence of milking cows, then I looked at my watch and noticed it was around afternoon milking time. I had to revise my earlier statement.
My weather predictions last month also proved to be a bit premature and we have now had a decent amount of rain which is making the paddocks look better. The average cover is now an amazing 1850 kg/ha DM and growth nearly doubled at 22 kg/ha DM this means we may not be grazing covers under 2000kg/ha DM and as we are still feeding the cows we are stretching the rotation out to 45 days. It is some what gratifying to see cows choosing to graze before they tuck into their tucker.
I hear Jeremy Clarkson doesn’t like the Hybrid car, no matter how economical, sustainable and easy to run they are. Now there’s a man who’s not heard the expression “turnover is vanity, profit is sanity”. Our hybrid heifers are looking good and we have purchased some more as you can’t have too much hybrid vigour.
We still have a lot of big Holstein types that will inevitably do well each year, maybe have a 365 day calf, low SSC and good feet, while producing a drop of milk all from grazed grass. I have always thought these are the animals the breed companies or societies should be after.
There has been some discussion on soil organic matter and ours is low at 2.2-3% despite the addition of thick slurry over the years by deep leg injection this may have sent it down too deep for the grass plant to use. We are now investing in a shallow injection and aerator machine.