Dairy farmer Bill O Keeffe on his farm in Kilkenny.
Dairy farm families in the southeast are welcoming the news this week that the High Court has rejected the challenge to the Kilkenny cheese development at Belview, Co Kilkenny. Hopefully this project can move forward now through the second half of 2021 and help to secure the incomes of thousands of families across the region.
With no more delays, we could have this plant up and running for peak milk in 2024 and reduce the impact of the peak supply restrictions introduced by Glanbia last month.
These restrictions imposed by Glanbia indicate that this plant is needed for current cow numbers in the country, rather than an increase in cow numbers in the future. Hopefully farmers get the opportunity to engage in some meaningful dialogue with An Taisce on the best route forward for the Irish dairy industry and for the farmers involved in that industry, before any more objections are lodged with our legal system.
SHARING OPTIONS:
Cows have been tail painted as an aid to monitor activity. This will be an important aid throughout the breeding season.
Breeding is due to commence on Newford Farm on Wednesday 21 April and 100% AI will be used again in 2021.
The farm has recently finalised its sire selection for this season and details of sires selected can be found in Table 1.
A number of sires return to the team in 2021, with Fiston and Hideal used the most in 2020.
Selection criteria
There is no bias among breeds, with sires selected following an analysis of sires available carried out by Michael Fagan of Teagasc.
Maximise submission rate
If you don’t serve the cow, you won’t get her in calf. The target six-week in-calf rate is 75%. This means that 75% of milking cows in the herd should be in-calf after six weeks of breeding.
When heifers are introduced at calving time, there should be 90% of the herd calved in six weeks.
To maximise submission rate, missed heats, silent heats and problem cows should be checked out early.
The best way to achieve this is to carry out pre-breeding heat detection or a pre-breeding scan. If doing heat detection, the easiest thing to do is to tail-paint all cows three weeks out from breeding and top up the paint once weekly. At mating start date, those still with paint on should be drafted out and seen by a vet.
Synchronisation can help to tighten up the calving pattern of heifers. \ Donal O Leary
As most livestock farmers will be aware, a healthy cow or a post pubertal heifer will have a heat (oestrus) every 21 days or so. I say “or so” because the actual normal range is 18 to 24 days.
On the laws of probability, if you have 100 females in a group, between four and five will come into heat every day over the 21-day cycle.
The purpose of a synchronisation programme is two-fold. Firstly it condenses the animal’s naturally occurring heats into a shorter period and, secondly, hormone treatment can bring forward a heat and get an animal back cycling sooner.
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