The focus on dairy farms is primarily on calving, but it is important not to forget about your yearling replacement dairy heifers.
Your dairy heifers have now been housed for a number of months and are entering into a critical period.
These heifers will hopefully be bred for the first time in April or May, and enter into your milking herd in spring 2025.
During the housed period, the aim would have been for these heifers to gain between 0.5kg and 0.7kg/day, but this is only the case if the heifers were already on target.
Yearling heifers
2023 was a challenging year for replacements heifers – tough weather conditions coupled with poorer than usual silage quality has meant that many heifers may be behind target.
Ideally, you would have weighed your heifers when they entered the shed to get an idea of what stage they were at.
Any heifers that were under weight at this stage should have been separated and given priority feeding.
It is important that you continue to check the group and ensure that animals are continuing to achieve their targets.
In this situation, a group average is irrelevant – as each animal needs to be looked at on an individual basis.
The weight of each of these heifers should be determined based on their maintenance figure, with some herds potentially having significant variation.
Feeding
Knowing the quality of the silage you are feeding is important, e.g., a 67% dry matter digestibility (DMD) silage will require an extra kilo of concentrates, compared to a 72% DMD silage.
Silage quality may be an issue on some farms, so it is important that this is considered when looking at your heifers.
Feed space is also important to look at – for yearling heifers, 0.3m should be sufficient.
If space is tight, there may be a reduced performance from your heifers during the housed period.
Advice
You firstly need to access the situation on your farm, get an understanding of your heifers current weights and how they have performed over the housed period.
Heifers that are behind target need to be pulled from the main group and given priority feeding.
Parasites could also be an issue, as failure to control them in heifers could result in significant production losses as a result of reduced weight gain, fertility issues, irreversible lung damage, increased susceptibility to disease and even death.