Hasnt it been great to see some this week . With nearly 60% of the herd calved we have had a few big days on the calving front - the biggest day seeing 29 calves arrive at the calf shed. All the herds have between 18 and 21% of their target 25% replacements already with another 2.5 weeks to get the remainder. Use of sexed semen for the first 2 weeks of mating last year has definitely helped with replacements on the ground early.
Grass growth has continued to be strong so APC is still much higher than we anticipated at this time of the year. This gives us the opportunity to open the milkers up and drive milk production from pasture early in the season. We are also behind on our SRP area used relative to target.
Most milking cows are holding BCS well, although we have identified a group of at risk cows and heifers that will stay on OAD milking and be put onto priority feeding in the shed.
Our one headache at the moment is our springer paddock area. This is getting very tight so we will be reducing the pasture allocation and increasing supplement to these mobs in the short term. It would be nice to use these animals to eat into our surplus pasture but at the area allocation required to prevent damage to milking platform paddocks it would mean too much pasture in their diet.
