Given the current drought conditions and limited grass availability, farmers should be looking into moving on cull cows.

Cull cows are not making the farm any money worth talking about by keeping them for an extra few weeks or months.

Instead, they are mowing through limited grass, or gobbling up valuable feeds in terms of silage and concentrates.

Considering the movement of cull cows is often a topic of discussion towards late July as it is, even without drought conditions.

That is because the sacrifices can often outweigh the benefits, whether those sacrifices are additional pressure on feed resources and hindered performance of high producers, or cell count issues and poor closing farm covers.

Either way, marginal cows in the herd will only increase costs at this time of the year.

Cull cows

Most of the saving of fodder stocks is achieved when poor performing stock are culled sooner rather than later.

Considering there was very little fodder reserves after the long winter, farmers will be conscious of what silage is being fed to cows now.

Therefore, it is critical that farms are calculating their breakeven point for their milk sales/cow now.

Once this has been calculated, farmers will need to look at the cows that are below this, highlighting those that are only costing the business money.

There is no point in keeping on these cull cows for the sake of it, as it is a waste of time milking those that are not making you profit.

Heifers in their first year of production are obviously going to be slightly below par, but there should be no excuse for a cow in her third or fourth lactation to not be performing.

If cows are not contributing to the bottom line of the business, there is no point in keeping them on.

Most farms should have some extra heifers that will be able to replace the low-performing cows.

If not, looking at buying in heifers could be an option, although that can be easier said than done.

Cull cow factory prices are relatively steady, as factories were quoting €6.00-€6.10/kg for ‘P’ grade cows during the week, which makes moving on these cull cows now ahead of the autumn a no-brainer.

When it comes to moving on cull cows, always sit down and look at your own figures first, considering the profit/loss of each animal, and what can be culled without affecting your nitrates banding.