1000 Visits!

Just a short post today to let you all know the blog has passed 1000 page visits!

Table showing page visits by nation

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by, and for all the positive feedback I've received in the last month.

I hope to post at least fortnightly throughout the year, and try to cover as many topics as I can. I've tried to steer it away from being over technical and wonkish, to provide a broader appeal. But if more detail and figures are what you're after then here is a list of sites/sources I love to read and trawl:

http://www.agresearch.teagasc.ie/moorepark/
The Irish research farm Moorepark provides a fantastic starting point for pretty much any topic concerning grass based systems.

http://www.siddc.org.nz/lu-dairy-farm/
Lincoln University Dairy Farm, based in Canterbury, NZ. Check out their 'Focus Day' handouts, providing a wealth of information, and demonstrating just how much can be recorded and analysed on a farm.

http://side.org.nz/past-proceedings/
Past proceedings from the annual South Island Dairy Event in NZ. A huge number of topics are covered. One of the first sites I came across, and still keeping me occupied for hours!

http://www.dairynz.co.nz/
DairyNZ's website, particularly useful is the NZAEL section, which provides proofs for bulls based on BW.

I hope these sites prove as useful to you as they have been to myself.

Until next time, good luck and keep grazing!

Emlyn

Staffing your Seasonal Unit

In today's post I thought I'd discuss staffing on seasonal calving farms.

On an unrelated note, here's a recent picture of my 1 year old heifers, just to hold your interest:

Heifers cell grazing

As a spring calver I like to think I work twice as hard for half the year, then half as hard for the rest! Almost all the important, labour intensive tasks are focussed in the first six months of the year. We calve for 10 weeks, then we're straight into our DIY AI for another 6-8 weeks, before we can turn the bulls in and have a rest.

This all works OK(ish) with owner operators and equity/sharefarmers. We can work from Feb to mid April without a cow free day, including weekends. But really is this just a failure of our own management?

I recently heard that the goal of management was to make yourself redundant. I don't wholly agree with this, but it's an interesting point. One of the markers of the success of our management is how well things run in our absence. By this measure if I feel I can't take a day away from my farm for 70+ days, this would seem quite a failure.

But is seasonal calving a special case, that doesn't necessarily compare to other industries and wider management practises? At least one experienced person needs to be available round the clock, unless staff are onsite, which is rarely the case for small/medium operators in the UK, then this will fall to whoever lives in the farm house.

The other problem is that there is not an abundance of semi experienced causal labour that can be fairly employed for the 3-4 busiest months. We face the choice of either over staffing for the entire year, or under staffing, grinning and baring it. Perhaps the answer is somewhere in between? 

We've recently taken on a relief milker for the morning milkings. So far it's working well, freeing up an extra pair of hands to either help with calf rearing or training heifers in the parlour. We've calved 33% in 14 days and so far we seem to be coping. I doubt I'll manage many more cow free days, but with my wife expecting our first child on April 11th hopefully I'll be forced to relax, manage better and spend as many days as I can getting to know my new baby daughter. Because ultimately those will prove the most important and memorable days of my whole seasonal calving calendar!

Emlyn 

Let's go grazing!

Just a short post to mark the start of grazing at Tre Abbot.

Cows grazing paddock 9

Barring any extreme weather events, like the snow of Spring 2013, milkers will be out grazing day and night until the last week of November. Ground conditions are good at the moment, with cold winds drying the farm for the last 3 days.

Grazing Wedge 01/02/15

Figures about the weeks grazing:

Average Cover: 2500

Growth: 3.5*

Demand: 3.5

Rotation Length: 120

Allocation per day Ha: 0.88

LU/Ha: 0.5

Supplements Kg: 3 Concentrate, 2 Silage

* First measurement since November, so read this as average winter growth.

Calving 2015: A promising start

Things have finally kicked off on both our farms now!

Cows wintered at the runoff are bagging up, with a wagon booked for next week, to start bringing them home on the point of calving. Hopefully two loads a week, plus our own trailer everyday, will help us keep ahead of the game (famous last words)!

The big news though has been the success of our heifer synchrony programme.

Today, 1st of Feb, is the PSC (planned start of calving) for our heifers with the cows expected from the 10th.

Over the last five days we have calved 12% of the herd, nearly all heifers! Our heifers were synchronised and all served on the same day to an easy calving sire. To have 50% of them calved by their due date, with another 25%-30% bagged up, and expected in the next few days is really pleasing for several reasons:

1. Staff are fresh from our winter break, so we are most able to deal with any calving problems and training heifers in the parlour. Though with a daughter proven, easy calving sire, we have only had to assist one birth so far (touch wood).

2. These animals will have the maximum amount of time to recover from calving and cycle before our mating start date.

3. High BW heifer calves born at the start of our block means they will have the maximum time to grow and meet target weights for breeding.

Here's hoping that calving continues apace. My next post will probably be a bit about calf rearing, with lots of cute pictures.

Until then, best of luck to everyone calving, or thinking about turning cows out to graze!

Emlyn