For most, it’s the time of year where you feel like you can take a bit of a breather. In preparation for and during the dry period, we’ve put together a few tips and reminders before you move into the 2022/23 season. A good dry period is the foundation for the following lactation.
Drying off:
Consider cows for early dry off by looking at milk production/daily rumination/BCS/liveweight.
Use selective dry cow antibiotic treatment by only treating cows who had clinical and sub clinical mastitis during their lactation.
Please remember to enter an “Exit” event for all cows leaving the herd so we can re-use their management numbers for the coming season.
Check your dry group numbers on AfiFarm (if you have more than one dry mob) and enter a “Dry” event for the cows on the day you dry them off.
Dry period:
Reconcile cow numbers on MINDA with cow numbers on AfiFarm.
If your pregnant heifers/R2’s are not on AfiFarm please contact us before you tag and collar them/put on pedometers.
Getting ready for calving:
Use the expected calving date feature on AfiFarm to draft out your springers according to calving date if this is accurate.
AfiCollar farms, get in touch with your vet/consultant prior to the calving season and discuss what to do with your colostrum cows that don’t recover their rumination by Day 4 post calving.
If you have walkover weight with your AfiSort drafting system, let’s make use of the weights to calculate weight loss over the dry period and identify high risk cows.
Please get in touch if you need help with any of the points mentioned above. We are here to help you get the most information out of the data your Afimilk sensors collect daily.
