First Milking - Speed tips needed if any!!!

Farfield

Any advice on milking first heifers - smart ideas needed. I have about 30 heifers calving in the next 2-3 weeks (all new start t milking). At the minute there are about 8 calved - 5 ready to go to tank now and 3 still for dumping(only calved). The question is, the row holds 10 but i have no dump line, so any bright ideas how to speed this up. I can milk the 5 with the main line, but the row is left standing waiting on the dump bucket milking out each of the other 3 one at a time - seriously slow. Dont really want to buy another dump bucket???

6480

you could borrow a bucket from a neighbour

blue5000

Maybe use a 12 gallon aluminium milk churn instead of a dump bucket. Put a T piece on the milk lines so 2 cows could be milked at once into the churn.

Another alternative is to milk all the cows fit for the tank first, then milk all the cows with biestings at the end of milking into a 40 gallon barrel with the top cut off it. Might be worthwile to make a yogurt culture out of this to feed calves. Antibiotic milk will have to be kept seperate from the yogurt.

bogman_bass

just turn away the ones that arent for the tank when loading and milk the others last. when you grow you numbers it isnt a runner but very doable with 30

6480

i remember when i use to milk in the byre i would keep the cows for last that couldn go for the tank ,