Dry January: Spring Calvers Did It First

When I started working in dairy consultancy (way back in 2007, when I was 14, Donald Trump was just a business tycoon, and Rihanna's "Umbrella" was at number one for ten weeks), one of the first things I learnt about spring calving was that they effectively had January off- or at least that is what it looked like for someone from an all-year-round calving background.

This is Cocoa's Mother, unfortunately she has been named after her daughter, and the name has stuck. She is a very distinctive and pretty cow, but quite grumpy.

Cows aren't milked continuously. The amount of milk produced by a cow declines in a natural lactation curve, and at a certain point before the next calving cows are "dried off", and have a break from milking for the final stage of pregnancy.

The amount of time that a cow is dry will depend on both the farm and the cow- most farms will have a target, which can range from 40-60 days, but cows that are thin, producing low amounts of milk, or are heifers (cows in their first lactation, so the youngest in the herd) may benefit from a longer break.

The traditional model for spring block calving farms is to dry the whole herd off in a short period (from one day to a week or so) in the lead up to Christmas, and not firing up the parlour again until they start calving at the beginning of February. This is the "Dry January", although envious all year round calvers may mention that the period is unlikely to be dry for the farmers involved, who don't have to milk over Christmas and the New Year.

Our calving block starts later- the beginning of the last week in February- and our milk contract pays a bonus on winter milk, so we don't dry off the whole herd, but dry cows off in batches based on their calving date. This means that over Christmas we still had some cows milking, and will continue to do so throughout January.

Many other spring calvers now do the same thing, so Dry Januaries are not as common as they once were- or as common as other farmers may claim.

The process of drying off ensures that the cow's teats aren't open to any pathogens that might take the opportunity to colonise an inviting teat canal. When a cow stops milking they naturally form a keratin plug, which disappears as the cow's body prepares for calving. Inserting a sealant provides an additional barrier, and is done under aseptic techniques.

It is one of my favourite jobs on the farm as it doesn't involve machinery, and there is something very satisfying about using cotton wool and surgical spirit to get each teat scrupulously clean.

The dry cows are then separated into their own group (away from the milking cows) and fed on silage until they come to calving. On a spring calving herd the dry period will always be in the depths of winter, so our dry cows are housed. Ours move around the shed as the group get bigger, and we use gates to expand the amount of shed space they have while still keeping them separate from the milking group.

Our in-calf heifers (often known on block calving systems as R2s- Replacement 2s) are mixed with the dry cows, which gives them the opportunity to acclimatise to housing before they calve. This group of R2s are some of my favourite animals on the farm, as they are all brilliant individuals and the group includes our favourite cow Dolly's older daughter Sorrel.

One of the tasks that the R2s have to get used to is foot bathing, where they walk through a shallow trough of water to clean their feet and prevent foot problems. The R2s took a few gos to get used to the process, and on one of the days when I was working I had to find an older cow to volunteer herself to go through first. As soon as she stepped through the younger animals followed- all apart from Sorrel who wasn't going to let leadership or the prospect of food on the other side get her through. It took two of us to coax her through, but she's now a pro at it.

Our first calf is due on the 1st of February- we had a small group of cows who didn't calve in 2020, and started the breeding process an oestrus cycle early to ensure they did get in calf for 2021- but there is still plenty of work to do while the milking herd is small.

As they are all housed the cows all need feeding twice a day, and their beds and standing areas scraped. Their beds are topped up with sawdust, and as mentioned above they walk through a foot bath twice a week.

The calves born in 2020- the R1s- have outwintered on the silage ground, but they are running out of grass and will be moved back to the farm over the next few weeks. For now they get visited daily to move them to fresh grass and check that they are all doing well.

Farming of course isn't just about the welly work outside- like any business there is plenty of paperwork. Drying off cows in batches means pulling up lists of cows by calving date, and checking their individual histories. We are part of a discussion group that benchmarks annual financial data through a template known as a CFP- Comparable Farm Profit- so have been putting together the figures for that. With that information we've also prepared a budget for 2021. At the end of the month the discussion group will meet (this year on Zoom, of course) to look at each other's CFPs, a great opportunity to look at the good and bad of the previous year and make changes where appropriate.

Glossary

Block Calving: A system where the whole herd calves in a 12- week block. Spring calvers typically start at some point in February, in order to match milk production to grass growth (which reduces the need to feed extra cow cake), while autumn calvers typically start in August or September.

All Year Round Calving: The system operated by the majority of dairy farms in the UK. Cows calve all year round, which means that the milk supply from the farm is level. There will always be dry and milking cows on the farm, and the milking cows will be in all of the stages of lactation.

R1s: Replacement 1s. Heifers on a farm from birth to their first birthdays.

R2s: Replacement 2s. Heifers on a farm from their first birthdays to when they enter the milking herd (at which point they become milking heifers or first lactation heifers)

Heifer: A female cow that (confusingly) hasn't calved or has had one calf. On all year round herds heifers are typically called heifer calves, bulling heifers (around a year old when they are sexually mature and are bred), in-calf heifers (as obvious as it looks), and then milking heifers. Heifers that haven't calved yet are also sometimes called "maiden heifers".

Our farm is a spring block calving herd in West Wales, managed through a contract farming agreement and selling milk on a cheese contract (milk from our cows can be found in the mozzarella on your Pizza Hut margherita). The cows are managed on a grass-based system and will graze from March until it is no longer suitable for them to be outside- usually some point in November. By "not suitable" we mean that either the soil temperature is too low to support grass growth, or the wet conditions means that they will start to damage the soil.