Farmer Focus: Dry matter error spotted in transition diet

The wet fifth-cut silage has come back at a staggering 16% dry matter. I don’t think that’s a record, but it must be pretty close. We’re feeding it already to ensure the milkers don’t have to get it later on. It’s pretty grim stuff, but I’ve seen worse – maybe!

See also: Benefits of analysing slurry as it’s being spread

About the author

Tom Stable

Tom Stable and family, Ulverston, Cumbria, milk 350 Holsteins three times a day, producing milk for Arla. The 300ha operation, of which two-thirds is rented, grows grass, maize and winter wheat and cows average 11,800 litres.

Read more articles by Tom Stable

The wheat went in well, although we missed getting the sand out of the slurry store. This has limited our storage capacity, with about 3,500t of sand and fibre sat in the bottom of the store.

The forecast this week looks good, so we’ve made plans to get it emptied, which will be a relief.

The cows are well settled now and performing well, doing over 3.3kg solids. We’re very busy calving from now until Christmas, so I’m glad the transition problems have been sorted.

We misjudged the dry matter of the new forages we’d swapped onto, and that meant we accidently reduced the intakes of the calcium binder we feed to the transition cows.

We have plenty of heifers on the ground, but are going to keep herd numbers static for now, so we have started selling fresh cattle again. I took three cows to Bentham Auction at the end of October: two second-calvers and a third-calver.

They did tremendously well, averaging £3,350. The Freshways milk price cut announcement that came a week later may knock the enthusiasm out of the trade, though.

Sentiment seems to be turning before improvements have gathered any real momentum – with the demand for milk protein so high and fast markets so weak, milk price variations between farmers are going to increase depending on what market your buyer is in.

We’ve been given a kick up the backside with the parlour project. The building work is behind schedule, but the parlour itself is dead on time, due for delivery in December.

We have nothing above ground to show for the seven months’ work so far, but hopefully this will change shortly. The footings are in for the parlour end of the building; the middle section will have to wait for the slurry store to be completed.

At least putting up the parlour end will give us somewhere indoors to work and allow other trades to become involved.

We are targeting completion in early 2028, which sounds a long way off, though I’m sure it won’t feel it.