Teagasc hosted its winter milk webinar last Thursday (December 11), with the main topic being how to reach and maintain peak yield in autumn-calving cows.
The main speaker for the event was Dr. Joe Patton, a Teagasc nutritional specialist. Joe outlined what farmers should be feeding autumn-calving cows in order to reach and maintain peak yields.
Joe outlined that a ”negative energy balance is to be expected and that you cannot prevent it”.
Do not try and eliminate a negative energy balance as it may cause more harm than good and, instead, reducing the size of this deficit should be the goal.
”Avoid pre-calving feeding of meal unless there is an issue with body condition in the herd or the silage quality is poor – below 68 dry matter digestibility (DMD).”
Joe recommends increasing concentrates steadily after calving over a ”10-to-14 day period”, to avoid issues such as ketosis and left displaced abomasum (LDA). Preventing this issue will allow cows to reach peak milk quicker and maintain peak for longer.
He also outlined that forage is the most important part of any diet. Joe said that it’s hard to do anything with poor silage quality of 64-68 DMD.
Joe noted: “The target for any liquid milk production system should be to feed 74+ DMD silage. While lower quality silage will require up to 3kg of meal to make up the difference.”
He also outlined the fibre target that you should be aiming for when cutting silage for feeding milking cows. ”The target for fibre should be 32-38% in the total diet of milking cows, this may mean in some cases that straw may not be necessary.”
General advice from Joe was ”to keep things simple, do not over complicate diets and feed to a realistic herd milk yield”.
Good basic diet for a cow producing 33kg of milk, used in the Johnstown Castle autumn-calving dairy herd:
- 9kg DM grass silage;
- 4.5kg DM maize silage;
- 3kg blend, barley, beet pulp, soya, distillers, minerals;
- 2-7kg high energy 18% concentrate.