Farmer Focus: Milk fever spike remains mystery despite tests
Colin Murdoch © Jeff Holmes We might as well start with this month’s disasters. Make yourself a cuppa, as it’s a long list.
I once spoke to someone not long after I started writing this column, and they said they liked the fact I just said it how it was.
No one wants to hear about your successes, but we can all relate to the mistakes and failures.
See also: Are milk fever and negative energy balance under control?
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Three weeks ago, completely out of the blue, we started having mid- to late-lactation cows going down with milk fever.
It started with one the first afternoon milking, then another two at the next. It got to the point where we had 29 on the parlour alarm list and I was dreading going out every morning.
By some miracle, we actually only lost one cow and the rest all picked up again relatively quickly.
After testing everything from silage to cake and the blend, we’re still none the wiser, and the problem disappeared as quickly as it arose.
A sage fellow-Jersey breeder did tell me it could have been down to a sudden change in air pressure. My vet was a bit sceptical of that theory, but nothing would surprise me with these cows.
We’ve just started calving the next batch of 50 heifers.
I could count on one hand the amount of vet-assisted calvings we’ve had in the past few years but, unfortunately, out of the first five heifers, we had two sets of twins all twisted together and an Angus bull calf coming backwards.
Things have improved since, thankfully, and they’re settling into the milking herd.
We’ve just split the cows back into highs and low yielders rather than running as one group, to try and target feeding efficiency and stop stale cows getting too much condition.
Even with changing onto second cut and a tweak in the energy of the diet, I’m pleased with yields sitting at 26 litres at just over 11% solids.
As a dairy farmer, we all know that if it’s got teats or tyres, then it’s going to give problems.
This proved to be the case last week with the pick-up brakes collapsing. I’d understand this if it was old, but we’ve only had it since last year.
Credit to the dealer: they came and recovered it and provided a replacement with a V6 turbocharged engine. Needless to say, I’ve not been chasing them up to see if ours is fixed yet.