Looking after your calving cows

In Northern NSW, calving is just starting in a lot of beef herds.  I really love seeing new calves appearing in paddocks as I drive about visiting clients. 

In terms of major events on the cattle calendar, I reckon calving is probably the biggest event.  Its important to manage this event well, as a good calving season will impact on your short and longer term productivity and profitability.

You should aim to put your cows into paddocks where you can supervise them during calving.  

Ideally you should be able to access yards easily if you do need to provide assistance.  

Your calving paddocks need to have good shelter, access to water and most importantly sufficient pasture.

Many people don't realise how much extra energy their cows require once a calf is born. Once that calf arrives, the energy requirements of the cow will effectively double.  If the amount of available pasture, or the quality of the pasture is insufficient, your cow will lose weight and she may also produce less milk which will impact on the growth of your calf.

In the longer term, weight loss post calving will impact on the fertility levels of your herd.  Cows which are in low fat scores at calving, eg Fat Score 2, will take much longer to return to oestrus.  In practical terms, this will see less cows going into calf at joining time, or a longer and more spread out joining which then impacts on next years calving. 

Calving is a challenge particularly for first calf heifers, especially if they are calving as 2 year olds.  This group of females requires a lot more attention, both during the calving period, and immediately post calving.

I reckon managing feed for your newly calved cows is the most important task.  Using an appropriate supplement can help your cows use paddock feed more efficiently and meet some of the energy requirements placed on them as lactating cows.

Ensuring your cow nutrition is correct will help ensure your longer term goals for a fertile productive herd can be met more easily.

The critical time of calving is the during calving and immediately and the months leading up to joining.  Well supervised, well fed cows will be much better suited to joining, while their calves will be better grown and more robust which is important for your future enterprise goals.

I've been spending a bit of time talking with producers about the best ways to manage their calving season.  So if you'd like to get in touch, I can help you develop a plan to manage your newly calved cows.

Some Tips for Feeding White Cottonseed to your cows

In the last few weeks I've had quite a few people asking me about using White Cottonseed in their supplementary feeding programs.  

White Cottonseed is a great feed, and I reckon is one of the more versatile options for graziers undertaking a feeding program.  White Cottonseed is rumen friendly, which means it doesn't require introductory feeding or building up an amount each day.  White Cottonseed has good energy levels, around 13 MJ/ME and good protein levels, generally around 20% CP.  

This means White Cottonseed can help your cattle utilise poor quality pasture more efficiently, and it adds some extra energy into their daily intake.

White Cottonseed

Because White Cottonseed is fluffy, the grains cling to each other.  The practical upshot of this, is you can't store it in a silo or feed it through a self feeder.  

You can feed it in dumps straight onto the ground, or in troughs.  Ideally you would feed it every second day.

The daily rate for feeding White Cottonseed shouldn't exceed more than 30% of the animals daily intake.

Its also important to know White Cottonseed needs a functioning rumen to be properly digested.   This means DON'T feed it to calves under 150kg live weight; to horses or to pigs.

The NSW DPI has really useful fact sheet on feeding White Cottonseed to cattle,  It has the recommendations and amounts for all classes of stock.

http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/96008/white-cottonseed-a-supplementary-feed.pdf

Don't forget if you do want some advice on White Cottonseed or supplementary feeding I'd be happy to have a chat with you.

Welcome to Rayner Ag

I’m Al Rayner.  Welcome to my new blog.  

I am really excited about launching my web page and to start a blog.   I’m planning on sharing plenty of ideas and stories which I reckon might be helpful to your business, or at least to help you keep in touch with what’s happening in agriculture at the moment.

For the past 17 years I was working as a Beef Cattle Officer with NSW DPI.  It was a great career and I enjoyed working with a lot of interesting and inspiring people.  I worked most closely with farmers, but I also had plenty of opportunities to work with people in industry positions, researchers, and even schools.  

I’m now running my own company RaynerAg.  So what do I do? 

If there’s one thing I love doing, its working with the people who grow our food and fibre.  I love being able to share ideas and work on new ways to be more efficient, more sustainable and more profitable.

I’ve been thinking about the season a lot this week.  While there are some predictions for rain on the way, I don’t reckon it will change pasture conditions too much in the short term.  So, if you’re not thinking about some strategies for managing your calving cows next month, I reckon you need to get onto that straight away. 

If you do need to start feeding, you really want to work out how much feed you’ll need and more importantly, how much it will cost.  Planning now will help you manage calving a lot better and keep your cows close to condition for joining in spring.

Make sure you do get some advice about feeding and management strategies.  Not all the things you hear about feeding are always exactly right.  You don’t want to listen to the wrong thing and waste a lot of money on products you don’t need or are not really the right options for your cows and pasture conditions.