Dairy Chitchat 3

Buford T. Justice XIX

Heavy traffic on this evening's commute. I suspect an L driver trying to do a 3 point turn:(

oxjkqg

Scanning yesterday
21/22 heifers in calf - good
18/99 cows not in calf - bad.
very disappointed with cows, a few good 2nd and 3rd calvers didnt go in calf.
4 weeks AI and bull with them for 6 weeks after, bull in good health and bulled majority of heifers.
Good records kept of calving issues and any problem cows looked after.
What other issues to look out for?

whelan2

Lepto?

dar31

oxjkqg wrote: »

Scanning yesterday
21/22 heifers in calf - good
18/99 cows not in calf - bad.
very disappointed with cows, a few good 2nd and 3rd calvers didnt go in calf.
4 weeks AI and bull with them for 6 weeks after, bull in good health and bulled majority of heifers.
Good records kept of calving issues and any problem cows looked after.
What other issues to look out for?

Can you go through records and pull out conception rates on a weekly basis and see if there is any pattern.

I done it here and conception dipped to 23% for a week was able to link it to a bad load of meal where the cow got a touch of acidosis

jaymla627

oxjkqg wrote: »

Scanning yesterday
21/22 heifers in calf - good
18/99 cows not in calf - bad.
very disappointed with cows, a few good 2nd and 3rd calvers didnt go in calf.
4 weeks AI and bull with them for 6 weeks after, bull in good health and bulled majority of heifers.
Good records kept of calving issues and any problem cows looked after.
What other issues to look out for?

I reckon their is schellemberg going around again had a few cows showing clinical symptoms of it where their was rapid milk loss going from 34 litres a day to barely 5 litres with what looked like ibr but after 4 days they where back up to 30 litres and zero issues after and no lung damage was the younger cows/heifers been affected which likely had no natural immunity had a outbreak of it here back in 2015 so the older ladies would have had some immunity built up to it

mahoney_j

oxjkqg wrote: »

Scanning yesterday
21/22 heifers in calf - good
18/99 cows not in calf - bad.
very disappointed with cows, a few good 2nd and 3rd calvers didnt go in calf.
4 weeks AI and bull with them for 6 weeks after, bull in good health and bulled majority of heifers.
Good records kept of calving issues and any problem cows looked after.
What other issues to look out for?

Lots very simillar results around heifers very good but cows 10/20% empty .itvwas great spring great summer for stock lots cut way back on meal fed great year for grass but only my opinion think we’re expecting way too much from grass great feed when well managed but it’s variable in quality and needs to be balanced ,soft lush grass ,high in nitrogen on its own or with minimal supplementation is a recipe for disaster

Mooooo

Vaccinations up to date?
Diet thru breed8ng consistent enough. Kept em at 4 kgs throughout here dunno if it made a difference or not?
Bull could have had a period of infertility.
Scanning went well here but have a cow standing this morning who was scanned incalf, hoping it's a false heat but urea levels in milk high enough for the last month

Buford T. Justice XIX

oxjkqg wrote: »

Scanning yesterday
21/22 heifers in calf - good
18/99 cows not in calf - bad.
very disappointed with cows, a few good 2nd and 3rd calvers didnt go in calf.
4 weeks AI and bull with them for 6 weeks after, bull in good health and bulled majority of heifers.
Good records kept of calving issues and any problem cows looked after.
What other issues to look out for?

As Dar said before, was there a particular time that the most of these girls were in their last heat?

And vaccinations as well, what do you vaccinate for and is it done at the right time? Did you give a late Lepto vaccine this year after it came back in stock? IBR?

I know we have some peculiar cows this year, cows not in calf not showing heat at all and cows well in calf showing heat every 3 weeks.

whelan2

Had the milk tank service man out again today. Bearing and seal gone on one of the agitators.

Grueller

whelan2 wrote: »

Had the milk tank service man out again today. Bearing and seal gone on one of the agitators.

What make of tank again?

oxjkqg

Buford T. Justice VI wrote: »

As Dar said before, was there a particular time that the most of these girls were in their last heat?

And vaccinations as well, what do you vaccinate for and is it done at the right time? Did you give a late Lepto vaccine this year after it came back in stock? IBR?

I know we have some peculiar cows this year, cows not in calf not showing heat at all and cows well in calf showing heat every 3 weeks.

Fond of the meal here as we have a cow which produces the goods, lowest amount of meal fed is 3.5kg.
Don't vaccinate. Might be worth looking into it.
Acidosis could be a very good point. have had some cows which were very loose/scoury at times. A lot of things to consider.

whelan2

Grueller wrote: »

What make of tank again?

Packo

Grueller

whelan2 wrote: »

Packo

I take it you wouldn't recommend them?

whelan2

Grueller wrote: »

I take it you wouldn't recommend them?

Was just talking to the service man and he said I am very unlucky with my tank. Some lads he never heard from year in year out. This must be his 6th visit this year alone.

Buford T. Justice XIX

oxjkqg wrote: »

Fond of the meal here as we have a cow which produces the goods, lowest amount of meal fed is 3.5kg.
Don't vaccinate. Might be worth looking into it.
Acidosis could be a very good point. have had some cows which were very loose/scoury at times. A lot of things to consider.

Do you milk record? There's a herd health option with the recording which can show up exposures to different diseases in the herd. It showed up a few problems in my herd that I wasn't picking up on earlier.

I'm not wholly convinced about its accuracy though, I was getting a Neospora problem flagged but only one cow showed up positive and she was suckling?

kevthegaff

whelan2 wrote: »

Grueller wrote: »

I take it you wouldn't recommend them?

Was just talking to the service man and he said I am very unlucky with my tank. Some lads he never heard from year in year out. This must be his 6th visit this year alone.

My dairy cool gave trouble 2 years ago but has been good for awhile now and trouble free first 4 years

kevthegaff

If their high yielders you would expect more empty, I have a smaller type cow had 11%empty of the cows from the milk recording, pulled the bull two weeks early but still a bit dissappointed as had only 5-6%last year.

alps

oxjkqg wrote: »

Scanning yesterday
21/22 heifers in calf - good
18/99 cows not in calf - bad.
very disappointed with cows, a few good 2nd and 3rd calvers didnt go in calf.
4 weeks AI and bull with them for 6 weeks after, bull in good health and bulled majority of heifers.
Good records kept of calving issues and any problem cows looked after.
What other issues to look out for?

10 weeks breeding is too short. It's fine to aspire to a 10 week calving, and you can still do so, but it's just too short a time for breeding. There is no allowance for a blip in conception rates, and the result is always a high culling rate. Breed for 12 to 15 weeks, and if pregnancy rates are good, only keep the cows calving in the first 10 weeks... When you have a bull anyway, there no cost (Maybe inconvenience) with letting him run on...

2nd golden rule is "Never rely on one bull", no ,matter how many cows they have to serve. Even if you have only 1 cow to serve, you need 2 bulls...dont compromise on this, unless you are going to AI against the bull every time...

During bullying time, you will always hit a suboptimal period for conception rates, caused by weather, feed, virus, or even unusually high output, so cover yourself by extending the breeding period.

visatorro

kevthegaff wrote: »

If their high yielders you would expect more empty, I have a smaller type cow had 11%empty of the cows from the milk recording, pulled the bull two weeks early but still a bit dissappointed as had only 5-6%last year.

Same as that here

kevthegaff

Ya you only really here 12 weeks minimum, I'm finished 25th April calving. Had enough of straglers. I was Ai myself this year so probably didn't help, hopefully getting better

Mooooo

I'll have more calving in .April than March by the looks of things, whatever the cause, so if I had of shortened mine from 13 to 10 weeks my empty rate wouldn't be pretty. At least with them in calf I could sell and perhaps by earlier calving cow's if they are around. More options than cull value anyway

visatorro

50% held to AI here. Only served 2.

whelan2

What do ye do with spring calvers that are giving very little milk. Is it too long to have them dry or dry off to fook?

whelan2

Eldest lad went on a trip with college today. They went to kilkenny mart, which he was well impressed with and on a grassland walk on Bill o Keeffes farm. Very interesting day

visatorro

whelan2 wrote: »

What do ye do with spring calvers that are giving very little milk. Is it too long to have them dry or dry off to fook?

Id dry off. Realistically they are costing you money. Unless you need litres for contract?
They'll hardly get too fat

Mooooo

whelan2 wrote: »

What do ye do with spring calvers that are giving very little milk. Is it too long to have them dry or dry off to fook?

What's very little? If you are feeding them they'll put on condition either way milking or not. Once scc and lactose are ok they could keep going till Nov I guess

whelan2

Mooooo wrote: »

What's very little? If you are feeding them they'll put on condition either way milking or not. Once scc and lactose are ok they could keep going till Nov I guess

Milk recording tomorrow so will see scc etc

GrasstoMilk

whelan2 wrote: »

Had the milk tank service man out again today. Bearing and seal gone on one of the agitators.

Did ours here 2 months. Expensive job. 300e I think for doing ours. Still wouldn't rate it a bad tank though. Our service guy was putting the bearings gone due to the height of the tank and the agitator having a pull on it at the bottom

Buford T. Justice XIX

whelan2 wrote: »

What do ye do with spring calvers that are giving very little milk. Is it too long to have them dry or dry off to fook?

The lowest of them would be the ones to dry off, I reckon. Put them in on hay/straw and a bit of silage to stop them getting over fat. I've a few to dry off next week and a few recycled spring calvers running with the heifers to bring in at the same time, a bale of silage every 3 or 4 days and ad-lib straw

Water John

I see Gawd is out protesting on the roads in France, again.