Welcoming you all to Thurlstone
On 25th August we will host a farm walk and the AGM for UK Jerseys, we welcome you to attend to see the farm and view the herd.

Spring & Summer update - 22nd May 2010
So grass grew right up to the end of the year and then stopped abruptly with the cold weather and some flooding on the grazing land here. This means turnout was delayed by one month compared to the last two years. The cows did start with an hours grazing per day mid March, increasing gradually over the next month until we managed 24 hour grazing. With the frost at night and slow growth the herd is using almost double the land it did last year.  

The month of cold dry weather has now turned into a drought but having said that on the wetter grazing block growth has picked up, the cows are content and managing on 3.5 kg of crimped maize and 1 kg molasses each along with chopped  straw and very minimum of silage, this is just holding milk production at 16 litres and fat and protein at over 6% and 4% from predominantly autumn calvers.

1st cut silage was taken on the 16th all in super condition, the Lucerne being a good crop but the grass varied from ok to not good at all. Lets hope we have some sensible growing conditions for a second cut and a decent maize crop because the clamps were empty at the end of winter this year.

Winter update
We are well into the winter routine at Scaftworth now and most things seem to be working out about as predicted. All the autumn calvers have finished calving with most served and PD'd back in calf, which gives us a 2 month break before the spring group start and with some more adjustments this winter this will stretch to a 3 months gap for next year.
The complete diet of maize and grass silage, fodder beet, crimped maize, rape and soya is performing ok with very good components of 6.4% Fat and 4.3% Protein. This gave us the feeling maybe we are missing a litre of production and some increase of protein would be of benefit but rather than increase the rape/soya at the prices this year we introduced 50 grams of food grade urea. This immediately changed the consistency of the dung, found some extra milk and put the fat back to 6.3.To my way of thinking a better balance - more litres of milk, still at the payment limit and not for a lot of cost.
Most of the calves born this winter are out of the Danish bred cows, and are by the North American sires Jacinto, Abe and Julian and home bred sire Phantom. DJ May supplied the Dane contingent. We keep trying to keep a balance by using the the North American sires to add width to the rumps and room for the udder and the Danish sire to maintain milk components, this along with aAa animal analysis will hopefully breed balanced cattle; not too tall and dairy and not too round and wooden, just something that can make the best use of home produced forage. Service sires this winter are similar with DJ Zuma used as the Danish sire.
After the snow melted the low lying ground we have flooded, not an unusual happening on this type of ground but it did stay around longer than I thought it should bearing in mind this river is a managed water level with huge big pumps that lift it into the Trent, so with a bit of pressure from NFU and some negative publicity from the BBC blow me in 15 hours most of it had gone, now isn’t that a funny coincidence!
The farm yard at the moment is a building site as we update the slurry handling system, fact is we didn’t have one, but with some help from an EMDA grant by Spring it will be finished and will make the management of the unit more streamlined and labour efficient.
John

Thurlstone Jerseys have won the Lilyhill Cup
This award is for the highest placed Jersey herd in the NMR Gold Cup Competition. We were presented with the award at the recent Dairy Event.

Anna, John, Sue & Tom Dickinson are presented with the Lilyhall cup.

With more than 80mm of rain in July, grass growth carries on at much the same pace. Grazing rotations are still less than 20 days with most paddocks now having been cut and grazed for some time throughout this summer (most unusual for this eastern side of the UK).

Grass silage stocks means winter feed is secured and with maize still to come in, it means more of the crop can be used for grain. Along with fodder beet it will provide all the herds energy requirements from the farm for this next year. We are looking and waiting for a gap in this weather to cut third crop for the young stock ....... nothing appearing yet!

August now, so the cows are being dried off all the time. We have 50 dry cows to date, each one getting antibiotics plus teat sealer and allocated 42 days dry period. This means just one dry cow diet, "keep it simple" and as yet housed on a bare field next to the dairy.

The first 5 cows have calved this autumn all calving bulls, already getting that sexed semen feeling for this times heifers, and maybe some of the early calving cows too, who knows?