FARMER FOCUS: Ross Symons debates winter grazing cows
Breeding of our autumn herd began in earnest on 1 November. Truth be told it started the day before. My Dad must be one of the most superstitous people in the world and didn’t feel good about starting a job on a Friday. Instead, I started it the day before.
So far so good as the cows have been showing good old-fashioned 12-hour standing heats, making heat detection and insemination relatively straight forward.
We’ve also opted to have an AI technician come to serve our heifers. In the past we’ve done it ourselves, but it quite often gets put back in case something else comes up. Having someone turn up on farm wanting to serve these heifers certainly concentrates our mind to make sure they’re ready for them to serve.
The recent dry weather has also allowed us to carry on grazing the cows. They have the choice whether to graze or go in the cubicles after feeding. This is also the case for our spring-born heifers and our in-calf heifers too. Discussions are underway whether to make this winter grazing more of a permanent thing.
We’ve outwintered heifers on fodder beet before with decent success, but have brought them back in the last two winters, which isn’t a huge surprise to any of us. Fingers crossed we can do it again as currently the beasts look very content outside and that makes us content checking them.
As the year end approaches our thoughts start turning towards 2014. We always finish the year by making our forecasts and cashflows for the next year. This is usually done over a couple days. Numbers are crunched, debates held and plans drawn, with our longstanding consultant Ronnie calling me Paul all throughout by mistake.
Despite this, though, his knowledge of our business (he’s been advising my parents longer than i’ve been living) is incredibly important and doing these plans is time well spent.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas and hope all your animals behave on the 25 December – if only for one day.
Ross Symons farms 200 dairy cows, including his own small herd of pedigree Holsteins, with his parents near Truro, Cornwall. They are converting their year-round calving herd to autumn block calving