Outlwile Maselwanyane – African Farming

CATTLE

Outlwile Maselwanyane, Mahikeng – Ramatlabama, North West

We’ve had good rains this year so we’re hoping that our grazing camps will have enough grass to last until the next rains. August is an easy month for us.

We can focus on infrastructure main­ tenance and on getting our animals through the end of winter.

The bulls are still with the cows – but hopefully most of them are pregnant. We will check to confirm pregnancies soon and then we will separate the open cattle from the pregnant cows.

The bulls will go back into the open cow group. The cattle are still on a higher protein winter lick which we mix ourselves. The mix contains molasses meal, grass or lucerne and crushed yellow maize for energy.

When we don’t have lucerne we substitute with maize chop; molasses meal can be substituted with Master 20. We mix one 50kg bag of molasses meal to 15 bags (50kg) of a mixture of maize chop, grass and crushed maize.

The cattle always have a block of salt in the kraals to stimulate appetite and encourage water intake.

In winter there are less diseases around but we are still monitoring animals and treating those that show signs of sickness.

We are preparing for the rainy season in terms of herd health. We will vaccinate the cattle against lumpy skin disease which we get in our area. We are preparing to replace winter licks with summer licks as soon as possible after the first rain when the grass will start flushing.