Cows gorging cake

[Jdunn55]

I understand you are trying to do your best. Unfortunately it’s to easy for people to sell you a solution at times.
If your cows are calving in well and fresh cow health is good then the dry cow nutrition / calcium control is probably good so by all means feed the same rolls but drop the Choline.
Pick the top 25% at risk cows (or what ever number you and your vet are happy with) and treat with kexxtone. In fairness if you have had no issues without kexxtone and just Choline I doubt you will have too many issues dropping the Choline.

Thanks, I may well try that, especially as you're not the first to say that coline needs to be fed for 80 days not 20
I've got to order a load of stuff ready for calving (calf powder, dry cow rolls etc) so will drop it out then
I haven't had any milk fevers yet so would guess that the dry cow rolls are working,

What would you say are the most at risk cows? I understand that anything that scans as having or subsequently has twins is worthwhile and anything that has a hard calving but ypu can only do them once they've calved,
Just don't say fat cows maybe extra extra fat cows?

 

[Farmer Fin]

Thanks, I may well try that, especially as you're not the first to say that coline needs to be fed for 80 days not 20
I've got to order a load of stuff ready for calving (calf powder, dry cow rolls etc) so will drop it out then
I haven't had any milk fevers yet so would guess that the dry cow rolls are working,

What would you say are the most at risk cows? I understand that anything that scans as having or subsequently has twins is worthwhile and anything that has a hard calving but ypu can only do them once they've calved,
Just don't say fat cows maybe extra extra fat cows?

It’s really hard to say without seeing your system or your cows.
How many cows have you calved down so far? How long have you been dairying / calving cows?

Unfortunately doing cows once they calve has little benefit as it takes the kexxtone probably a week at least to be effective.

Remember kexxtone is just an aid and not a necessity. It may be you don’t actually need it. Classically it was overly fat, overly thin (although you may not have these), lame or previous history of issues. However most farms have a knowledge of which type of cow causes the issue. I guess you might not have calved enough cows yet a your new farm to build this up.

You also have to know that when kexxtone first came out it was widely used as milk price was good and the extra milk / less sick cows meant a lot of farms used them extensively. However the milk price crashed a year or so later and it was one of the first things to be dropped. Many farms didn’t in turn see a major decrease in fresh cow health as transition cow management increased.

If you are managing to calve in ok with no milk fever then your intakes / milk fever control sound good. Your management might be better already than you give yourself credit for.

 

[Cows 'n grass]

Possibly going ott just scared that I won't do them well enough, I've had a sh!t year and the cows haven't done as well as I had hoped and just want them to fly with me next year

I can remove the coline without a problem, I'll still feed a roll but without the coline which will drop it to £400/t, the problem is if I have to kexxtone at risk cows I will literally be doing 95% of them, they all seem to go fat after about 200 days, got 1 still doing 25l who needs to go dry in 2 weeks time only having a kg of cake and she's fat having done 9000l in well under 300 days as she got in-calf to first service, calved in April and now due in February! I'd they were all like her I would be thrilled!

Drop your target from 9000 to 6000 and then build a cost structure around that. The cows will be easier to manage and if they do over that then you'll think they're flying.

 

[Jdunn55]

It’s really hard to say without seeing your system or your cows.
How many cows have you calved down so far? How long have you been dairying / calving cows?

Unfortunately doing cows once they calve has little benefit as it takes the kexxtone probably a week at least to be effective.

Remember kexxtone is just an aid and not a necessity. It may be you don’t actually need it. Classically it was overly fat, overly thin (although you may not have these), lame or previous history of issues. However most farms have a knowledge of which type of cow causes the issue. I guess you might not have calved enough cows yet a your new farm to build this up.

You also have to know that when kexxtone first came out it was widely used as milk price was good and the extra milk / less sick cows meant a lot of farms used them extensively. However the milk price crashed a year or so later and it was one of the first things to be dropped. Many farms didn’t in turn see a major decrease in fresh cow health as transition cow management increased.

If you are managing to calve in ok with no milk fever then your intakes / milk fever control sound good. Your management might be better already than you give yourself credit for.

So I just spoke with my feed rep and I was wrong, they don't sell dry cow rolls with coline in, got that mixed up with nwf who only sell dry cow rolls with coline in.
I've calved 60ish? Cows in, only started in late March so not long

Perhaps I can get away without the kexxtone boluses after all
I feed ad lib hay which I bale and chop so it's fairly short as I hate them pulling long strands out the feeders to jam up slurry tankers which I would have thought would improve intakes
They then have 2kg of dry cow rolls for the last 20 days of their dry period
They get a bolus at dry off with selenium, iodine and cobalt and a couple of other things and then access to dry cow mineral blocks too

 

[Jdunn55]

Drop your target from 9000 to 6000 and then build a cost structure around that. The cows will be easier to manage and if they do over that then you'll think they're flying.

You're probably right, my target for this year was 6000 litres from each cow as an average but they won't do that probably closer to 5000 than 6000 from my guess

I overestimated what I could get the autumn calved cows to do, was hoping I could get them to do another 4000-5000l but I think they did closer to 3000l which bought the average per cow down by quite a bit
Then I also overestimated my heifers, was hoping they would do 5500l but they've only done 4500l
The cows I've calved in have exceeded what I wanted them to do, (hoping for 8000 and they've done 8500) but the trouble is I've only calved 20-30 cows so hasn't been enough to bring the average up

The trouble has been that in the spring/summer I overfed the autumn calvers and heifers with cake to try and get the litres from them which in hindsight I shouldn't have done and has no doubt cost me money
I also didn't keep a good enough eye on grazing management which also cost me money, I think I've sorted that and am going to buy myself a plate metre for Christmas

Next year I'm aiming for 7500l, there should only be a handful of cows switching blocks that will be stale and I've learnt my lesson on overfeeding these. Coupled with hopefully better grazing management, and only 10-15% heifers instead of 40-50% I think that should be doable
I'm also not going to feed as much cake, aiming for 5-6kg as an average for fresh cows instead of 8kg and push high quality grazing in front of them instead

 

[In the pit]

You just need to feed and see what targets you’ll get
I’d put my budget at 6000 lts and see we’re you get to

 

[Farmer Fin]

So I just spoke with my feed rep and I was wrong, they don't sell dry cow rolls with coline in, got that mixed up with nwf who only sell dry cow rolls with coline in.
I've calved 60ish? Cows in, only started in late March so not long

Perhaps I can get away without the kexxtone boluses after all
I feed ad lib hay which I bale and chop so it's fairly short as I hate them pulling long strands out the feeders to jam up slurry tankers which I would have thought would improve intakes
They then have 2kg of dry cow rolls for the last 20 days of their dry period
They get a bolus at dry off with selenium, iodine and cobalt and a couple of other things and then access to dry cow mineral blocks too

Sounds like it!
Don’t be frightened to query things and ask for help. There are always plenty of opinions on here as well, not all will work for you but there is nearly always some that will.
Good luck!

 

[ollie989898]

There won't be many herds on kexxtone around here I would wager a very select few I would guess. I will have to ask the wife.

I know of several high yielding herds who only grow grass silage on the farm and buy in cake or blend or certain select straights to match.

I can think of a few farms that grow maize and wholecrop to go with their grass silage and would get high yields that way as well.


The majority of Barber's own herds will be on a very simple system as outlined earlier.

 

[In the pit]

I did the ground work alongside the vet for the ketone bolus and out of a 450 cow spring calving herd there was only 5 cows what would have neede a bilus

 

[ollie989898]

I did the ground work alongside the vet for the ketone bolus and out of a 450 cow spring calving herd there was only 5 cows what would have neede a bilus

My wife did a lot of work with a herd when Kexxtone was a thing and was going there nearly daily to record all kinds of data. She knows the product inside and out. I would bet she can't list 5 herds in this area using them on a regular basis.

 

[Jdunn55]

I did the ground work alongside the vet for the ketone bolus and out of a 450 cow spring calving herd there was only 5 cows what would have neede a bilus

Out of interest what made those 5 cows need them and none of the Others?

 

[Jdunn55]

My wife did a lot of work with a herd when Kexxtone was a thing and was going there nearly daily to record all kinds of data. She knows the product inside and out. I would bet she can't list 5 herds in this area using them on a regular basis.

Is your wife a vet? Any chance she could message me her opinion on them based on what she found from doing the data?

 

[ollie989898]

Is your wife a vet? Any chance she could message me her opinion on them based on what she found from doing the data?

I would but she isn't available at present.

 

[In the pit]

Out of interest what made those 5 cows need them and none of the Others?

As @ollie989898 said is wife did the daily thing so did I
Took milk samples every day from cows at different days into there lactation and then they were tested for ketosis
Most cows had none
Some were slight ketosis and then the 5 would of benefitted from a bolus
If I remember there was nothing different about the cows, all various ages and in good nick and it was only because of testing that they were picked up

 

[ollie989898]

As @ollie989898 said is wife did the daily thing so did I
Took milk samples every day from cows at different days into there lactation and then they were tested for ketosis
Most cows had none
Some were slight ketosis and then the 5 would of benefitted from a bolus
If I remember there was nothing different about the cows, all various ages and in good nick and it was only because of testing that they were picked up

I have a feeling my wife took bloods and did other things as well. I know the farm very well as it belongs to a former client of mine and very good friend to this day.

 

[betweenthelines]

The cows that had already calved when you took them on had their yields set before you came on the scene. Focus on the first 100 days in milk and let the rest of the lactation take care of itself.