With Christmas Day only a few days away, it is important for farmers to try and minimise their workload for the day and spend time with family.
Work still has to be done whether it is Christmas Day or not, but it doesn’t mean that the whole day has to be spent slogging away in the yard.
For many farmers, especially the winter milking farms, the parlour will still have to be turned on two time in the day and calves will have to be fed and potentially a few cows are set to calve.
For the spring calving herds, all the cows will likely be dried off and the main focus will be on feeding the cows silage, herding cattle and making sure passageways and cubicles are cleaned.
However, quality time with family still needs to be priority and there are a number of measures that can be taken in order to reduce the amount of time spent in the yard.
Workload
Farmers should try and set themselves up that only the essential work is done on Christmas day such as feeding, milking, herding and liming of cubicles.
To achieve this, farmers will need to do that bit extra in the lead up to Christmas, for the workload to be reduced to the bare essentials.
Supplies for the farm over the next couple of days is crucial and farmers should be double checking that they have everything to see them out the few days.
Co-ops and shops are closing soon and the last chance to get supplies may be before 12 noon on Christmas eve.
Farmers need to also make sure that they have enough scraper oil for the period while making sure that they have a spare hydraulic pipe in the event of a burst pipe and one or two essential spare parts for the scrapers.
Farmers should also check the engine oil and back-end oil levels of their tractor or loader to make sure they have enough and it’s no harm to have a drum of each in the garage for the Christmas period.
Milking and feeding
For the autumn calving herds, milking will still be ongoing and farmers should be setting up gates the night before to make sure everything is smooth sailing when milking on Christmas morning.
Another time saver may be having a mix already done for calves with water and powder already in the buckets, ready for hot water.
All teat troughs should be cleaned prior to the period and ready to go on Christmas day.
For the spring calving herds, cows are dry and so along with the autumn calving herds, cubicles still need to be brushed and limed and silage needs to be fed.
One way of reducing the workload in terms of feeding is to put out a few extra blocks of silage that can be pushed in when needed.
Where farmers are feeding a total mixed ration (TMR) diet, a second mix could be done on Christmas eve which would help with reducing the amount of time spent in the yard on Christmas day.