The majority of spring-calving herds are now dry, so it is a good opportunity to review your farm performance for 2023.
It is no doubt, that it has been a challenging year for farmers, and that the landscape of the Irish dairy sector has changed in comparison to this time last year.
It is still important to look back at your farms performance and identify areas that are in need of improvement.
2023 will be remembered for all the wrong reasons, with poor weather conditions, impending changes to regulations, and low milk prices.
Some questions farmers can ask themselves include:
- Are all my paddocks performing, do I need to reseed?;
- Do I have good enough access to all my paddocks? Would extra roadways help?;
- Did I make too many, or not enough bales last year?;
- Am I maximising the number of days at grass?;
- In relation to soil fertility, do some paddocks need lime?;
- Did I reach grass growth targets and how much concentrates/cow were fed?
Weather will have an impact on the answers to some of the above questions, but once that is factored in, there is still going to be areas of the farm under-performing.
Once the paddocks or fields have been identified, works needs to be completed to ensure that the issues are corrected.
Cow performance
Moving to cow performance, with some hard decisions to be made on many farms, it is important to look within the herd and determine how each cow is performing.
Some question to ask about cow performance:
- Did my cows achieve my milk solids target?;
- Am I happy with the cell counts?;
- Was there an issue with mastitis or lameness?;
- Am I happy with how the calving and breeding season went?;
- Are all the cows pulling their weight?;
- Am I milk recording and if not, should I be?
A bigger focus needs to be placed on the genetics of the herd, cows that are producing high levels of milk solids, have good fertility, and are low maintenance, are the cows you want in your herd.
Having records on your herd is going to be a vital tool to monitor and identify top performing cows within your herd.
2024
Many dairy farms are going to be impacted by the changes to the nitrates regulations, and the commonly heard term is ‘less from more’.
Yes, the picture has changed somewhat, and in many cases there may actually be less cows, but it is still possible to maintain a good margin.
Farmers should determine what improvements can be made within the farm gate, achieve sufficient soil fertility, and farm performance. Then, focus on the genetics of the herd, determine which are the best cows, and use these to breed the future cows within your herd.