Post Natal Feeding

[Tim Watson]

How much do people feed once the cow has calved?
We started off ad-lib hay and haylage but don't want to end up with an overweight cow and the spring grass coming.
Have cut it back a bit to two fat slices of hay a day and see whats left in the rack at feed time and top up accordingly.
Plenty of milk there and the calf looks good.
Thanks for your advice

[Broomcroft]

It depends on how good your forage is Tim. Our cows just get just hay, haylage and molassed licks, all ad-lib. I haven't had our forage tested this year but I know it's good because you can see them doing well on it, and the sheep. Main problem is keeping the weight off.

But if you're trying to conserve forage, they'll probably need something else but make sure they plenty of long fibre otherwise it'll upset them.

I reckon mine eat 12-16kgs of hay per day each. Two thick slices a day sounds low to me.

[Broomcroft]

Thinking back a couple of years when our forage was poor quality, I gave our cows (pre and post calving, all in one group) about 1-1.5 kgs a day of general beef cattle nuts.

[Saffy]

I gave mine beef cattle nuts when I first had them as I couldn't get Suckler Rolls/ High Mag Rolls and there is a decent amount of Mag in some beef nuts, so I thought they would be better than nothing but mine scoured on the beef nuts, although I fed a small amount and I lost a cow with Magnesium Deficiency. So I would carry on with the Suckler Rolls Tim.

Stephanie

[Mark S]

Hi Tim,

I would continue to feed haylage or hay ad lib, I have a group of cows that calved Sept to Nov. have been outwintered with access to a shed, on adlib hay. Both cows and calves look really well. If you are concerned about the cow getting fat keep her off the corn, If you have concerns that staggers (mag deficiency) could be an issue give her a high magensium bucket and keep these present after turnout.

Mark S

Brereton Herd