It’s that time of year again when our dairy farmers are entering the busy season of calving and decisions have to be made on what to feed the cow and how much. The answer will vary from farm to farm as cow condition, calving stress, production merit, climate, availability of grass, quality of silage, are all different on farms. The most important thing is that when the cow calves that she needs to be replenished with top quality nutrition from the beginning. Anyone with silage tested will have been issued a feed guidance on the analysis form, for those who haven’t tested silage and even assuming it’s of good quality you are still looking at feeding approx. 7kg of a high quality dairy cube/ration. The below chart will explain exactly why these levels of feed are required (below chart is assuming silage quality of 76 DMD).