Dairy Chit Chat- Please read Mod note in post #1

Dawggone wrote: »

Finished covering pits. The pit covers are the dogs danglies. A couple of hours work for what would have taken the most of the day.

You have them a few years now. How are they holding up from a wear and tear pov?

mahoney_j wrote: »

Exactly my thinking too ,all ai fr here till 15/18!june as well .the 2 of us will make a right wedge of cash selling our surplus and poorest stock in 2 years !!!!!,I've a few friends who finish a lot of cattle and from them and nos in cmns on top of all the beef Bulls dairy men are using the beef trade will be extremely tuff from late summer and right throughout next year

Hopefully you don't get a bad run of bulls, 6 heifer calves out of last 40 to fr this year, brings my four year average using conv to 75% bulls to 25% heifers only for sexed semen I'd be goosed replacement wise....
However bad beef gets you'll still clear 200 odd euros for your beef calf at 2-3 weeks old, do you reckon lads will have the money/even want more dairy heifers in 2019, toying with the idea here of keeping all beef heifer calves next year from my blockier cows and calving them down as two year olds and selling with calves at foot could be a better earner then selling excess fr heifers....
In relation to beef trade been tough it's never been a bed of roses anytime over the past five years but beef cattle always seem to hold their value as many part time beef men don't mind losing money, dairy stock are a different kettle of fish looking over on thefarmingforum dairy stock can't be given away and are only worth canner value in a lot of cases unless their top quality stock

jaymla627 wrote: »

Hopefully you don't get a bad run of bulls, 6 heifer calves out of last 40 to fr this year, brings my four year average using conv to 75% bulls to 25% heifers only for sexed semen I'd be goosed replacement wise....
However bad beef gets you'll still clear 200 odd euros for your beef calf at 2-3 weeks old, do you reckon lads will have the money/even want more dairy heifers in 2019, toying with the idea here of keeping all beef heifer calves next year from my blockier cows and calving them down as two year olds and selling with calves at foot could be a better earner then selling excess fr heifers....
In relation to beef trade been tough it's never been a bed of roses anytime over the past five years but beef cattle always seem to hold their value as many part time beef men don't mind losing money, dairy stock are a different kettle of fish looking over on thefarmingforum dairy stock can't be given away and are only worth canner value in a lot of cases unless their top quality stock

Bulls/heifers always balances out here most years .fr Bulls don't bother me as my herd is going to be tipping 190 ebi now and all next years male stock will be genotyped by a certain Ai company ,some will have Ai poteintal ,more for stock Bulls out of yard .certainly won't be making any knee jerk decisions re beef Bulls as I think it's a short sighted decision and I honestly think beef and praticurally he and aa calves could take a right hit due to volume been used .

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Had alot of scoury calves over the whole of March and into April.
Nothing died but alot of extra work .

Had tried feeding yoghurt milk this spring but this wasn't preventing occurrence of scour.

For a while every calf was getting it.
Vet was saying that prob one of those things ,ecoli maybe.

Ok hygiene is never perfect but not too bad .if a house wasn't washed prior to a new batch it was cleaned and limed at least.

If an attempt to change my luck I stopped using the yogmilk because it was torture to get the off form lads to drink it (cold ,sour etc).

The big bang came with the first non yog batch and they scoured badly with some ending up under lights and getting treated for a secondary pneumonia.

Vet was more inclined to sample these ones having seen their state first hand.
He used the dip stick test on farm and said that none of the big diseases were present sticking to his line that if you had a real bad bug your losses would be high and the effect on calves greater .

Problem is one of the samples came back positive for rotavirus.
Now ive never had it on the farm before this .we would have had very little trouble rearing calves in general. Last few years a few run ins with scour but nothing major.

From hearing lads talking at groups and that youd get the impression that rotavirus is a hellish thing to get in calves so thats whats confusing cos I got away reasonably ok.

Im back feeding the yoghurt milk and things have settled down .
Im wondering was the yoghurt keeping the worst of the effects at bay and in fact did I dodge a bullet .