Farmer Focus: Forage stocks sufficient with no passengers

A welcome 40mm of rain four weeks ago gave everything the kickstart it needed. But having nothing since then is not helping matters.

Grass thickened out and gave us a much-needed third cut, eight weeks after second.

The grass had all headed under stress, with very little leafy growth.

See also: What’s in Your Livestock Shed visits a purpose-built calf building

About the author

Tom Hildreth

Livestock Farmer Focus writer Tom Hildreth and family grow grass and maize for the 130-cow herd of genomically tested 11,000-litre Holsteins near York supplying Arla. The Hildreths run a café, ice cream business and milk vending machine on the farm.

Read more articles by Tom Hildreth

However, on further inspection, it appeared to be just one variety that had headed, with the rest lying dormant.

Waiting for that rain paid off for us: although what we cut was short, it was a thick carpet of dark green.

The main grass clamp, containing first cut, wholecrop overspill, and now third cut, is about three-quarters full, and a half-decent fourth cut should fill it.

That, along with the maize to come in, will see us through to next year, providing we aren’t carrying any passengers going into winter.

My calf shed has gone up quickly. I say calf shed; it’s a long way off being a calf shed. It’s just a shed at the moment.

The design is based on a central passageway with 4.6×4.6m pens either side. For the first week or so, the pens will be divided into four or five individual pens while we get the calves drinking well.

Then we will remove the small pens to give them the full space. They will stay there until they are moved into the heifer shed well after weaning.

By having nine full-sized pens, I will have enough capacity to muck out, wash and rest each pen before it’s required again.

Where the tenth pen would have gone will be our milk mixing and washing facilities.

One thing that has me a bit flummoxed is how to drain the shed.

I would like a channel drain under each row of gates, with the floor high at the back to create a drier lying area.

However, I’m not convinced the 10cm-wide ones I’ve been looking at will stand muck grabs and loader buckets being scraped over them, and it seems like expensive overkill to go for full, slatted channels.

Yet these appear to be the only two options.

I think I’ll have to make time this week to go and see a few calf sheds to get some ideas before I set a mistake in concrete.