Love is in the air, everywhere I look around. I’m sure that the majority of you have flowers, chocolates and a card already sorted for your better halves.
or those of you that haven’t, it’s back to the old motto: “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail”. To be fair, if you’ve forgotten the importance of February 14, you have good reason to (hopefully). Calves are coming thick and fast now on most farms.
Fertility last May was, for the most part, exceptional. Love was certainly in the air in dairy herds nine months ago and now we are reaping the rewards.
Last Sunday, I was in the local shop with our three-year-old who was having the most wonderful meltdown, as three-year-olds tend to do. A farmer, who I enjoy winding up when out on his farm, spotted his opportunity to return the favour.
He couldn’t hide the wry smile when he said, “When ye were heading off to fancy hotels on weekends away, you weren’t thinking of the consequences”. He laughed out loud as he walked away, saying: “There’s no pleasure without pain”.
We might be in the thick of the “painful” period at the moment, but, before we know it, we’ll be back in the breeding season again. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Will you go away. I can barely keep cows milked and calves fed.
Breeding is the last thing on my mind”. Well, in less than 80 days’ time, breeding season will be upon us, whether you like it or not, and what happens right now is going to dictate how successful a breeding season it’s going to be.
Nutrition, as we all now by now, is vitally important. I won’t claim for a second to be an expert in dairy cow nutrition, but there are some very basic principals.
Cows that have calved in the past few weeks need two things — fibre and energy. They need fibre to keep their rumens healthy and full, and they need energy to produce milk, put on condition and, ultimately, go back in calf in a timely fashion.
Lots of energy is no good without fibre, and vice versa. We need to really mind these freshly-calved cows, particularly the first calvers and the older ladies. They are statistically the two groups of cows that are most susceptible to any change in diet and are most likely to exit the herd at the end of the year due to not being in calf.
I had the pleasure of being in the company of one of the country’s leading experts in dairy-cow nutrition last week and I learned more in one hour about feeding cows than I did in my five years in vet college.
He used one very simple analogy to explain how dairy cows are treated at present. Imagine that since last December, you were on a diet of Weetabix only. Nothing else. Grim enough prospect. Now, imagine, on Valentine’s Day, that diet finished. You were given a huge fry up. Eggs, sausages, rashers, pudding, the works.
Then, you were given five bars of chocolate. When you had all that packed in, you had to run a marathon. If that happened to me, I’d be doubled over after the first mile, puking into the ditch. But, sadly, this is what we are asking our cows to do. The Weetabix diet of middling quality silage can’t be changed at this stage but the sudden abrupt change most definitely can.
A slow and steady change of diet after calving will make sure you have a cow that hits the breeding season in a state of slow progress as opposed to recovering from a severe shock to the system. What you feed now, and how you feed it, will have lasting ramifications for the rest of the year.
On to a much simpler topic — vaccination. It feels like only yesterday that we were vaccinating against calf scour and, in reality, there will be a bunch of later-calving cows that will be due this vaccine at the end of the month.
However, when it comes to breeding, lepto and BVD are the two that are foremost in my mind. For herds that will start breeding at the start of May, Valentine’s Day and Paddy’s are the two most important dates. Maiden heifers need two shots, four weeks apart of BVD and lepto with the second shot ideally given a month before breeding.
If you are popping into town for flowers and chocolates today, swing by the vet and pick up vaccines for your heifers too. What better way for you and your better half to spend a romantic afternoon, than running the maiden heifers up the crush, clipping tails and vaccinating. Love can only blossom on an evening like that.
All the focus so far has been on the Juliettes, with little thought being given to the Romeos — the bulls. I’m only seeing bulls at this time of year at TB testing and they generally fall into two groups.
The first is the older, established bulls. These are aged two or older, with at least one season under their belts. These bulls tend to have a paddock to themselves, with a well-dented round feeder. They are on a diet of mostly hay and the odd pinch of meal.
The other group are the young bulls. The majority of these are still in pedigree breeders’ sheds, getting pumped with meal to be ready for sale in April.
If you have bulls in the older group, now is the time to start getting them ready for breeding. If their feet need trimming, now is the time to do it. Start introducing some better quality silage and meal into their diet. They need to be fit and ready to go by May.
If you haven’t bought a young bull, go do it now. These young bulls need to be in the herd for at least a month and on a diet that means they are fit for breedingnot fat and ready to fall apart when the stress of breeding starts.
Don’t forget to get your vet to carry out a full breeding soundness exam on all bulls on farm, especially those that were used last year. Just because they worked last year, doesn’t mean they will do the same this year.
Hopefully everyone has a nice Valentine’s Day and remember, if you are looking for a late Valentine’s gift for your loved one, nothing says ‘I love you’ like lepto and BVD vaccines.
Eamon O’Connell is a vet with Summerhill Vet Clinic, Nenagh, Co Tipperary
