“All dry cows and close-to-calving heifers are kept in the same, roomy cubicle shed, moving into the front ‘transition’ bay in the three weeks prior to calving, or four weeks if they are a heifer. All transition cows are walked through the footbath and the parlour twice per week which really helps the heifers get used to the parlour and allows us to attach their magnets and transponders, and trim their tails, before they calve down.”
All the dry cows at Mapledurham receive the same base ration of maize grass, straw, mixed with water to stop sorting.The transition group also receive two kg/head twice a day of ForFarmers Translac Advance nuts, top-dressed on the forage. The team tip out the feed along the barrier and then ensure all animals get up to eat it.
“When the cows stand up to feed is a good opportunity to walk down the line and check for signs of calving, says Mark. “I’ve worked with ForFarmers nutritionist, Richard Greasley, for many years. We know the Translac product really works because on the rare occasions we’ve run out of it, we see milk fevers and other associated issues developing pretty rapidly.
“Also, a few years ago we decided to trial a completely different feeding approach in an effort to obtain more milk from forage, and cut right back on our concentrate use including the dry cow nuts. It soon became clear that this wasn’t going to work for us and our incidences of things such as DAs and ketosis rocketed.
“Our transition-related problems now run at a very low rate—for example in the last nine months we have only had three DAs and these have been with heifers who have had difficult calvings,” notes Mark.
Richard Greasley explains the science behind the product: “Translac Advance contains a calcium binding product which captures calcium from the diet in the intestine, therefore making the calcium less available for absorption during the transition period.
“When the product is stopped being fed at calving, the hormonal system is then primed and ready to absorb calcium into the blood. This means more calcium is available when her demand for calcium rapidly increases, she is able to ‘switch on’ this calcium store much more easily. This helps prevent milk fevers and also increases colostrum quantity and quality.
“What we are trying to do is prevent the estimated 50% of subclinical milk fever cases that occur at calving and never get picked up—the effect is like a PTO spinning at 540 rpm when it should be going at 1,000 rpm—it is working but just not as effectively as it could be,” says Richard.