This weeks fact:
Cows are grass-processing factories
The daily dry-matter intake of your average dairy cow can be anything from 2-2.5% of their body weight. If you say our average cow weight is about 550kg, that translates to 11kg per cow per day. Doesn't sound like that much, you say? Well, that's a whopping 4730kg (4.7 tons) of grass a day for our entire milking herd!
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| Frankie measuring pastures... |
So, as you would rightfully assume, we spend a lot of our time as farmers ensuring that there is enough food for the cows. This involves planting, fertilising and measuring pastures, as well as ensuring there is enough winter feed for when the grass stops growing. We plant mielies (that would be "maize" to the guys north of the equator, and "corn" to all the americans...) in Spring that we chop up in Autumn to feed over winter. So right now we have just finished planting all of our mielies, and we're starting to develop some parts of the farm to put in a new 70ha pivot of irrigated rye grass. It may sound like greek to you all, but we are super excited about getting some more grass planted!
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| Baby mielie plants arriving... |
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| Before and after: Clearing brush to make way for the new pivot. |
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| Pulling out hedges |
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| Frankie checking out the new cables for the pivot |
Exciting new changes coming for Kildare farms! Watch this space!
Have an awesome weekend peeps xxx
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