Make drying off less stressful
David Dymock, livestock technical advisor with MSD Animal Health covers best practice insertion of dry cow therapy and teat sealants.
DairyNZ last week advised farmers to assess and plan their own feed supply and demand situations and weigh up probabilities.
It says keeping on milking by means of supplement is risky: profitability is highly dependent on how soon it rains to restore available water levels, and therefore how many days in milk can be created by using feed grown by this rain.
“There is now very limited opportunity for this to happen during this lactation,” DairyNZ says. “The longer the water restoration is delayed, the more any feed grown (or purchased) will be required to underpin next season’s production.
“All these decisions must be related to expected cashflow for the next 6-12 months. While there is potential to produce and be cashflow neutral in the short term, can this be sustained through the winter and into next spring?”
DairyNZ says extremely dry conditions have hit Marlborough, Canterbury and North Otago.
While some areas are more affected than others, determined by the availability of irrigation, most of the dryland winter and young stock grazing has been affected therefore farmers will need to manage proactively.
It also advised farmers against milking empty cows. At a $4.70/kgMS, reducing the milking herd size by removing the empty cows is a critical first step towards rebalancing feed supply and feed demand.
“The feed they would eat can be redistributed to the cows being retained in the herd and compensates you for any milksolids the empties would have produced,” DairyNZ says.
“Not having 50 cows eating 14kgDM for 30 days brings 21 tonne DM of feed into the feed supply.
“The belief that empty cows produce more milk than a pregnant cow is a myth. Extra energy requirements for pregnancy are not significant until day 280 (for a July calving cow this is about April 1). Any difference in milk production between empty and pregnant cows is not apparent until day 250 of pregnancy.”
Once-a-day milking may be an option but time is running out for that too.
DairyNZ says it may already be too late to make any gains in body condition score.
“Over 50 days only small gains in BCS (0.1) can be expected from OAD even when milking cows are well fed. However it’s never too late to go to OAD if you have already made the decision to dry your cows.
“Switching to OAD milking takes the pressure off cows and staff and gives you more time to plan and manage. However somatic cell counts (SCC) can be an issue.”
Liveweight key as calving looms
Maintaining lifeweight and preventing further weight loss is crucial for calving.
DairyNZ says each farm needs to assess its feed resource and prepare a timeline for restoring BCS before next calving.
“If the feed and cash resources allow for BCS gain to be made using supplements, be aware that feeds differ in their efficiency to restore body condition scores.”
Calving cows at BCS 4.5 will come at a cost. DairyNZ says it’s estimated to be $38 less income per cow at the current milk price for reducing the herd BCS at calving from 5 to 4.5.
An increase in calving BCS from 4.0 to 5.0 increases milksolids production by 12kg/cow.
“Therefore 4.5 BCS at calving = 6kgMS/cow x $5.00 = $30/cow loss compared with calving at BCS 5.”
