SHEDS FOR 25

YEARS

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This year they had a 91.6% in-calf rate and last year’s was around 92. When they first came to the farm their in-calf rate was 96% but it dropped each year until it reached 84%.

The cause was a rare animal health issue where they discovered that their cows were very low in phosphorous.

They still don’t know what caused the issue. The optimal cow phosphorous level is 2 mmol/L blood serum, but their cows showed 0.4 mmol/L.

“We tested our soil and discovered that the phosphorous was locked in the soil and not getting to the grass.

The vet took blood samples and we began injecting them with Vitamin B. They were going off the milk, going

Continued page 14 down, and dying very quickly,” Penny says.

“One day we had three that weren’t looking good, just after we’d had a couple die. The vet took blood samples and after the first sample said ‘Ooh, that doesn’t look good.’ The sample was brown, just like chocolate milk,” Brad says.

After receiving the results they injected many of the cows with a phosphorus supplement.

“The affected cows were becoming anaemic within a week or two of calving, and went downhill very fast. Until we discovered the cause of the problem, it seemed like there was nothing we could do. They were just dropping dead and the vets had never seen anything like it before,” Penny says.

On the vet’s recommendation, they dusted the maize silage fed on the feedpad with a high-concentration phosphorus. They noticed an improvement in cow health within weeks.

The cows now cycle much better without needing to use any CIDRs. They believe the rising in-calf rate is a combination of the phosphorus supplement and the cows being very well fed.

“We lost about 10 cows. It was so stressful seeing them like that, you didn’t want to go back to them because you didn’t know whether you’d find more dead ones,” Penny says.

“We weren’t used to having dead cows, and to have three or four in one day wasn’t a nice experience. We now use high phosphorus content mineral blocks on the feedpad too. The in-shed feed was mineralised, so we thought we had our bases covered,” Brad says. were monitored they noticed that any ill cows quickly lost bodyweight. A cow with mastitis often lost one kilogram of bodyweight per day. Brad usually gets the cows in, so is familiar with the order that they tend to walk home and into the shed. Any lagging cows are given extra scrutiny.

“Now, we rely on the ‘eye-ometer’. It’s during spring when it’s really wet that we can have mastitis issues,” Penny says “Because it’s only the two of us who milk here, we know the cows and are familiar with the way they look, so can usually spot issues pretty quickly. During the spring we use a handheld teat sprayer as well as the automatic system.”

The feedback from the attendees at the SMASH field day was positive, but many attendees were puzzled why they didn’t carry out many of the practices that are deemed essential.

“We were asked why we didn’t herd test. Our shed is difficult to test in. Most of the attendees were surprised that we didn’t test, and didn’t know of anyone else who didn’t. If you find something that works for you, don’t change it.”

Mastitis is the farm’s main animal health issue and Brad and Penny are always on the alert for it. They think it’s mostly due to the amount of rainfall they receive. But their stocking rate of 3.3-3.4 cows per hectare can be tough to manage when it’s wet.

The yard scales aren’t compatible with Protrack. But when the scales

Brad has never been too concerned about the figures received from herd testing, except for SSC. He finds it easier to strip the herd, because a herd test only gives him results for one particular day.

“Herd testing is expensive. I’d rather spend the money on dry-cowing the entire herd at the end of the season.

We’re a wet farm and it makes sense for us to treat them all,” Brad says.

“We use a short-acting treatment because we don’t have an extremely high SCC. At the moment it’s sitting around 130,000.”

Looking ahead, they would like to purchase a drystock farm to rear beef or graze heifers, and employ someone to run the dairy farm.

“We still enjoy the farming lifestyle, but would eventually like a change from daily milking. I really like rearing our beef calves and watching them grow until they leave here two and a half years later,” Brad says.

“We’ll still be here in five years, but hopefully in 10 years we’ll be on a drystock farm,” Penny says.

Brad says that getting into a dairy farm is still achievable, but you must stick to the goal.

“We never thought we’d get our own farm, but we just kept working at it. It’s a bit different now though. We were lower order sharemilkers and there’s not much of that about now,” Brad says.

He’s always liked sharemilking or leasing compared to contract milking, because during good seasons it’s often possible to make more income than anticipated.

“You’ve got to work hard and put in the time if your aim is to become a