Dairy Technical Notes Ahead of Spring 2023

By John McCabe, Teagasc/Aurivo Joint Dairy Programme

Here are some useful tips & advice on nutrients, labour and breeding ahead of the busy Spring-calving period.

Slurry:

• 16^th January -The first day you are allowed to spread slurry in Zone B (Galway/Mayo/Clare/others).
• Spread thick slurry on silage ground and watery slurry on grazing ground if weather allows.
• Even where there is a long draw, it pays to spread some slurry on silage ground every year.
• Use trailing shoe or dribble bar to get more Nitrogen from your slurry and reduce emissions.
• 5m Buffer zones double for the 1^st two weeks of season. Keep back 10 metres from watercourses.
• Wait – trust your slurry and don’t spread fertiliser for 4 weeks after slurry.

Nitrogen Rules:

• 30^th January – this is first day you are allowed to spread chemical N and P fertiliser in 2023. This is a change from 2022, when the first day allowed was the 16^th of January.
• You are allowed different amounts of fertiliser based on your organic stocking rate, find out your stocking rate and make sure you don’t go over the prescribed amount. The limits have been reduced by 10% since last year.
• The department are aiming to bring in the fertiliser register this year. Make sure you have a plan for each round of fertiliser because you won’t have an option to buy more N fertiliser if you have spread your allowance by mid summer!

Tips to Reduce Nitrogen in 2023:

• As discussed, apply slurry and wait a few weeks – trust the nutrients in the slurry to grow the grass.
• Get your farm mapped. It will pay for itself within the year. Most people who do this say that they thought they were farming more acres than they actually are. If you are farming 5 grazing acres less than you think, that is a fair saving in fertiliser! Grasstec will do this and provide good maps that are handy to have for contractors/staff/family. There are other companies in the market too. There is also a function on Pasturebase to do this for free.
• Use a GPS unit when spreading fertiliser. Again, this will pay for itself within a year or two by avoiding overlaps.
• Spread lime on all ground below 6.3 ph. On average, only 75 of every 100 units spread on a low pH soil is used by the grass. This is bad for the environment and the bank account.
• Reseed old silage swards. They don’t respond to N as well as new swards. 100 units spread on a silage sward that hasn’t been reseeded in 15 years in most likely as bad for the environment and bank account as having low pH soils. It could be an opportunity to reseed with red clover.

Time:

You are entering the busiest time of year. You are also entering the most important decision making time of year. (Silage fertiliser/picking dairy & beef bulls/ culling high SCC cows/grazing/calf health/breeding/etc)

Here are some tips to help save time/effort:

• Use the contractor for slurry and the first 2 rounds of fertiliser.
• If suitable, a colostrum herd /antibiotic herd can save time. This means all cows in the main herd are milking into the tank and can be milked by someone else while the other person gets a start made on grass/cubicles/calves. Freshly calved cows can have 3 or 4 days inside on silage before entering the main herd which should reduce metabolic and stomach issues. It may not work if you don’t have a way of separating a smaller herd from the main herd. Make sure to take pipe out of tank before you milk the colostrum herd though!
• Aim to have the clusters on the cows at 3pm or 3.30 pm so that you can get cows out to grass in the daylight for a few hours and get finished up at a reasonable time. Only 19% of dairy farms in County Galway finish milking before 6pm.
• Farmers who milk once a day in February tell me that is a great time saver and that they should have tried it years ago

Breeding season jobs that can be done before calving starts:

• Stock bulls – dairy stock bulls are a thing of the past on most farms. You can find very good beef bulls on ICBF’s “Stock Bull Finder”. Most of the beef cross calves generated are off stock bulls so try to get one with easy calving and a good beef sub index on the DBI. (Minimum €50 for beef, minimum €60 for a Jersey cross herd).
• Pick out cows to breed to beef. Do this before you get busy. I suggest nothing below €140 EBI should get served to dairy
• Young bulls destined to be vasectomised bulls should have the procedure done by now. If not, get that done before calving starts