Farmer focus, livestock: Jim Dywer

The great news for October is that in the first week we had a total grass cover of 2770kg/DM/ha, which is good for this time of year. Luckily, ground conditions are good as we need to graze down some covers of 3300kg/DM, which we are finding difficult to do.

We are on the last round of grazing and it is so important to graze out these pastures well as the next time they will be grazed is in February 2011. It is necessary to start the last round of grazing early in this part of the world, otherwise we will not have enough grass to graze in early February.

However, high covers are a pleasant problem to have and as I write we have not fed any concentrates so far this autumn. This is saving a lot of money in comparison to last year when at this stage we were feeding concentrates and silage.

The cows are producing 1.35kg milk solids at 5.3% fat and 3.93 protein. The high solids gives us a good milk price at this time of year and this is vital as all the money has been spent at this stage to produce this milk and, therefore, it is practically all profit.

We scanned all our breeding animals in September and had some disappointing results. In the cows and heifers, 12% were not pregnant, 4% of which were first lactating cows and had the best of our genetics and have cost so much money to date.

We had a group of farmers from the UK visiting us at the end of September and it was great to exchange views and to return some of the hospitality our discussion group experienced when we visited the UK earlier in the year.