After that wet August it was nice to get a dry spell through September although the coolish temperatures meant it wasn’t quite the ‘Indian Summer’ we’d hoped for.

That said, it did let us get the straw from the winter wheat baled in reasonable condition and the fourth cut of silage done with out too much damage to the fields. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to take a fifth cut in the next few weeks to tidy the fields up and avoid too much winter kill.

The winter barley and about half of the winter wheat has been sown. The rest of the winter wheat is to follow the beans which we finally got combined at the end of last week, which is about two weeks behind normal. Although, as I mentioned in last time, the plants were huge, it appears they had maybe put a bit much of their energy into chasing what little sunshine there was over the summer, with the yields being 20-30% back on last year.

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We also emptied the sand out from under the slatted cubicle shed. Normally we use a skid steer to move the sand to where the telehandler can reach it, but this year we hired an articulated mini-shovel. While it could certainly move the sand a bit faster, I found it took quite a bit of getting used to. In particular, I found it quite disconcerting looking over my shoulder and seeing the back end of the machine sticking out to the side.

Our cows’ yields continue to ease back, partially due to the number of stale-ish cows we’ve got due to calf in December/January and also as we’re seeing the seasonal switch from volume to higher components with the latest tank figures being 4.28%BF, and 3.62%P. While the fat is unremarkable, that protein % is about 15% higher than we’d normally see through the winter. I can only assume that this is at least in part due to the fact we’ve now added Lysine to the rations for most of the cows.

What will be interesting to see is whether the fact we can no longer treat dry cows at risk of ketosis post-calving with a prophylactic Kexxtone bolus will make any difference to the milk solid levels over the long term.

When we started to use them, we definitely saw an increase mainly in the protein, but maybe the changes we’ve made to the diets in the meantime (such as addition of Lysine and Methionine) will mean there is less of an impact.

Given the effect that Rumensin (the active ingredient in the Kexxtone bolus) can apparently have on the efficiency of the rumen, I’m actually surprised that Elanco hasn’t looked to market it as a method of reducing enteric methane production, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of milk.

It would certainly appear to be a better option than Bovaer as it would be applicable to grazing herds too and also get away from the need to feed a silica-supported product to cows (I presume they have investigated the risk of silicosis). Although maybe Elanco doesn’t want to be marketing two products in competition with each other.

We’re also looking to try the Bovilis Cryptium vaccine as an alternative to halofuginone (Halocur) for prevention of scour caused by Cryptosporidium parvum. It looks as if the vaccine, which is initially two doses given to pre-calving cows (with an annual booster thereafter), will be quite a bit more expensive than Halocur. If it is effective, though, I think that will be a worthwhile trade-off as Halocur is pretty toxic and tends to set the calves back a little during treatment. This makes you more reticent about treating the weaker calves that actually the ones most likely to be susceptible to going down with cryptospirosis.

As we head towards winter, we’ve been looking at the cubicles in the slatted cow shed. Although they have only been in for just over 10 years, the salty sand we’re using to bed the cows seems to have taken its toll with large amounts of corrosion/wear where the loops meet the support poles, leading to the cubicles being somewhat irregular in size.

We’ve decided to try the ‘plastic’ Easyfix cubicles as an alternative, as hopefully the flexibility will reduce the pressure at the fixings so reducing the wear. Normally these cubicles are installed with a vertical pole for each cubicle loop but rather than have to essentially start from scratch, we’re looking to support them from two horizontal poles similar to what we currently have so we use the existing support posts.

In theory it sounds like it should be a straightforward job but these things always do – until you get started...