An introduction to my farm…
I am currently farming 300 acres in county Louth, 230 acres in one block around the dairy and the rest a mile away on an Outfarm. The dairy block has very heavy soil, turnout normally around St Patrick’s Day but last year we managed 28 of February. I am milking with a 15 unit parlour with Automatic Cluster Removers. It is a basic enough parlour with no frills.
I currently have 90 cows milking in 2 groups,
- 65 autumn calvers- 10 of which are carry over late spring calvers. These cows are getting between 4 and 6 kg of 21% nut in parlour and 2kg of the ration in their silage mix
- 25 stale cows who are being milked once a day and getting 1kg of 21% nut in parlour and 1.5kg of coarse dairy ration in their silage/straw mix
The autumn cows calve from middle of August until the middle of October. I started AI’ing the autumn calvers on November 16th , bulls I used were ABO, PBM,LHZ. I bought a British Friesian bull last year from the Barrowvale herd. Him into the cows on December 21st and I will take him out on January 20th.
The first spring calver calved this morning, she had a friesian heifer calf. I have 46 dry cows and 20 in-calf heifers. I use Ubro Red dry cow tubes at drying off, cows also get 45ml of Endospec 10% and 2ml of Rotavec Corona at the same time. Cows are normally dry for 6-8 weeks.
Regards,
Mary