We’ve had our dairy farm in the Strzelecki Ranges in South Gippsland for nearly 4 years now. And yes, waiting for rain. Its been dry well into autumn. We’ve had a few showers and the grass is starting to grow but much more is needed.
Around the farm.
Calving is just about finished. There are 40 milkers or fresh cows back in the herd so production is climbing again. The current herd is 137 milkers. Our next calving period will be in spring and these will be mostly heifers so our herd will grow significantly.
We were lucky that the grass stayed green well into last summer. However its been dry for the normal 3 months. We rely on dam water over the dry period so have to be careful with water.
Day to day.
The day starts at around 5.45 when the cows are brought up for milking. Whoever goes out needs a good torch to help find all the cows. The girls are fed pellets in the shed at each milking and afterwards, both morning and afternoon they are fed extra rations on the feed pad. We mix silage with crushed barley in the mornings and just silage but slightly more in the afternoon.
With all the new calves there is plenty of work feeding milk and topping up water. Each calf gets around 2.5 litres twice per day. We feed a little hay in each pen to start the calves on ‘solids’.
Building the herd.
There are three main herds of young cows on the farm. Young cows up to around 6 months, calves up to around 1 yr old and older heifers that are approaching maturity. The youngest group are still fed pellets each day – another regular job! They also get fed hay as do the 1 yr olds. The oldest heifers have taken over 3 large paddocks and mostly look after themselves. Our next group of spring calving heifers is being agisted off farm.
Projects.
We’ve taken advantage of the dry period to do some maintenance work on the tracks. Over the past 4 years we’ve completed some big projects like the new dairy yards, new vat and feed pad. Now we can focus on many of the small jobs like putting in new gates to make moving cows easier.
