Milk ureas.

[farmer on a bike]

To resserect this thread....... @farmer on a bike I seem to remember you hold your milk ureas/diet protein fairly low. Is this the case and how low are we talking?

with our autumn calvers we try to stay between 200 & 300 mg/l (units can vary depending on how they are reported). In my view over 300 tends to hurt fertility and below 200 hurts yield. However if you cows were in poor condition and you wanted them to put on condition you may want to aim below 200.

 

[Penmoel]

Ours comes in as mg/litre @ 0.032 last month, presumably that equate to your over 300 above?

 

[pappuller]

run consistently around .025 day in day out here

 

[farmer on a bike]

Ours comes in as mg/litre @ 0.032 last month, presumably that equate to your over 300 above?

yes

 

[Headless chicken]

yes

So how would you bring that figure down? Feed more energy?

 

[Beef farmer]

So how would you bring that figure down? Feed more energy?

Less protein

 

[Headless chicken]

Less protein

Mine aren't really that milking and my urea is constantly 0.032-0.035 so really I need to drop my protein more??

 

[Beef farmer]

Mine aren't really that milking and my urea is constantly 0.032-0.035 so really I need to drop my protein more??

Yeah. Probably save 10 quid a ton on your cake too. Mine are 0.019-0.021

If you divide your butterfat figure by your protein figure what do you get?

 

[Headless chicken]

Yeah. Probably save 10 quid a ton on your cake too. Mine are 0.019-0.021

If you divide your butterfat figure by your protein figure what do you get?

On the most recent one 1.356

 

[Beef farmer]

On the most recent one 1.356

Spot on them, no acidosis

 

[sidjon]

Never look at mine , but seems to be just over 400 (1.2 ms/cow or 10% soilds) any other spring calver this high?

 

[Sylution]

Our urea is usually 0.030 to 0.035. Can go down to 0.021 in mid summer at grass. But generally high. Protein in silage is quite high this year. Fresh cows are on 6kg of 16% high energy type cake. Cow dung is usually quite loose. But fertility is generally good. A lot of the autumn calvers have been bulling recently. And I start serving 12th November. 1.355 was my latest bf ÷ protein. What range should this be?

 

[Beef farmer]

1.25. Under 1 is bad over 1.5 is bad

 

[Cows 'n grass]

Never look at mine , but seems to be just over 400 (1.2 ms/cow or 10% soilds) any other spring calver this high?

I've not had any that high recently. The last few have been between 120 and 250. Doing 9.5 litres @ 7 and 4.6 so about 1.1 solids.

Im still only on a 16% cake + grass + fodder beet and a bit of grass silage. Cows are finally starting to put on a bit of condition after looking a bit thin all summer.

 

[farmer on a bike]

Never look at mine , but seems to be just over 400 (1.2 ms/cow or 10% soilds) any other spring calver this high?

In my view you cant really alter a spring calver much if most of the diet is grass. We have tried to go with 14% protein cake, but more recently we have used wheat gluten because it is cheap and we are only feeding 1.5kg to encourage them in the parlour so it has little impact.

 

[lazy farmer]

milk ureas been much higher than normal here still above 300.
on a 14% blend.cows beginning to look really well currently 5.47 fat 4.13 protein 1.44 solids.

 

[farmer on a bike]

1.25. Under 1 is bad over 1.5 is bad

In our other autumn herd we were running at 1.15 to 1.2 with plenty of evidence of Acidosis. We have changed the diet and cows seem better and the ratio is now more like 1.24 to 1.27.

 

[Cows 'n grass]

1.25. Under 1 is bad over 1.5 is bad

Mines over 1.5.

Maybe the formula doesn't work so well with brown cows.

 

[Big_D]

Mines over 1.5.

Maybe the formula doesn't work so well with brown cows.

Think you are right, butterfat relative to protein would be higher in jerseys than Holsteins. So your 1.5 would be similar to a Holsteins 1.25

 

[pappuller]

Nicely in the green.