Calving 2021

Fortunately we have had no case of milk fever yet, lots of it around, high K silage seems the be the issue. Slurry out too late and too much and silage cut too early.
 
I think that's the real science in breeding. They can breed a small calf that's born well before the due date. And still when the calf gets going, it will grow into a fine animal.
I don't think there are any such miracles. Looking at the fleckvieh AI leaflets there seems to be a negative correlation between hip width body size and calving ease of the sites progeny, but inversely if you have a more difficult calf to calf it generally leads to a cow that can calf a bigger calf.
I'd rather average calving difficulty of the sires progeny and a cow that is above average in how well she calves. So we choose 95-100 paternal calving difficulty but look for as wide as we can get on hip width and size.
Not a calf that comes out of any cow but rather a cow that will calf any calf.
 
If guys are going high in k they should be looking at their soil CA and mg. Putting mg chloride in water isn't great for animal health either if done constantly.
 
57 out of 98 calved here, started 10th of January, lost one cow due to getting the splits in the cubicles and we've had a still born calf also, calf was our own fault as we should have intervened sooner, all in all things are going well so can't complain, has anyone got to grass yet?, it will be March before we can even consider it
 
If guys are going high in k they should be looking at their soil CA and mg. Putting mg chloride in water isn't great for animal health either if done constantly.
We've been looking at it for years, but that's about all we can do!
High K silage is a product of high K available to the plant. Our K is high in our silage but particularly high this year as a wet late Spring meant there was a lot more slurry and we were spreading it later than normal also. After the 1st cut there was another round of slurry spread. Soil would be 3 + 4 for K. Only straight Urea used otherwise.
Silage made in 2021 will, be high in K also, not much we can do about that.
 
We've been looking at it for years, but that's about all we can do!
High K silage is a product of high K available to the plant. Our K is high in our silage but particularly high this year as a wet late Spring meant there was a lot more slurry and we were spreading it later than normal also. After the 1st cut there was another round of slurry spread. Soil would be 3 + 4 for K. Only straight Urea used otherwise.
Silage made in 2021 will, be high in K also, not much we can do about that.
Have you looked at an Albrecht test? Will give you % of calcium and magnesium in the soil. It might be as simple as spreading mg lime or some kieserite to balance things out.
 
Have you looked at an Albrecht test? Will give you % of calcium and magnesium in the soil. It might be as simple as spreading mg lime or some kieserite to balance things out.
Yes, we have. We have too much Mg in our soil.
 
Back
Top