Spring-calving cows are now entering the final months of their lactation and are in the process of winding down production.
Usually, grazed grass makes up a large amount of the diet on farms, but this year is very different.
Many farms are now feeding silage as grazing conditions become even more challenging across the country.
However, what should be avoided at this time of year is the excessive feeding of concentrates to cows.
Spring-calving
The focus on farms ahead of drying off is building average farm cover (AFC) to ensure grass is available for grazing until mid-November, if conditions allow, and early next spring.
At this time of year a cow’s production should be reducing by around 2.5% each week.
On farms where AFC is on target but grazing conditions are poor and milk yield is falling by more than 2.5%/week, farmers should only be feeding around 1-2kg of concentrates – along with silage.
It is important to note that, in late lactation, the aim is not to increase production from cows, it is to maintain a steady level of reduction in production.
So farmers should not be trying to increase production by feeding cows extra meal. Feeding extra meal is expensive and is not likely to make economical sense at this time of the year.
Forage intakes should be kept high and supplementation should be kept low, as only marginal milk will be produced from excessive feeding at this stage.
BCS
Keeping condition or building condition on cows is often another reason why extra concentrates will be fed to cows.
But feeding extra concentrates to cows will actually drive on production in cows and likely not help with building condition.
Instead, these cows need to be offered high-quality forage and have the pressure placed on them for production reduced.
But at this stage of the lactation it is difficult to achieve, so instead you should look at giving them extra time in the dry-cow period
This should allow them to increase their body condition score (BCS) and then calve down in the correct score.
Drying-off
There also needs to be a focus placed on identifying spring-calving cows that will and won’t require antibiotics at drying-off.
Using milk recording results, cows that have had a consistently low somatic cell count (SCC) throughout their lactation can be identified.
Cows that have had a high SCC or a case of mastitis during the lactation also need to be identified and it needs to be determined what treatment is required at drying-off.