question on milk measuring

have2flushtwice

how do you measure the milk from the cows each morning and evening?
is it manually through reading jars or otherwise?

I am helping on a test project in work where we take seeming irrelevant data and make something of it.
I'm using a car park space as an example and see who uses it/how often, if the regular is late will it be occupied by someone else;
if no other car can park beside it will it be occupied earlier.
above is the principle - to prove the idea can harvest the information. what to do with it - well if the principle works it will be applied to something meaningful eg people flow, coffee choice, whatever.


when I try to apply it to the outside world - I thought of measuring milk per cow.

taking this small bit of information (volume recording) it could be used to:
determine the performance of each cow day vs night/per month
plot the data against the paddock the cows were in (day 1/2/3)
grass measuring correlating to milk output
increase/decrease post bulling and so on.

so what else can the data it be used for - do you use a flow meter or how is it done.

a day milking wouldn't do me any harm I suppose!!!

It differs from farm to farm.
My milking parlour has milk metres, which weighs the milk from each cow.
The cow is identified by an ear tag as she comes in, so the milk recordings are automatically recorded on the computer with reference to each cow. So I can look up what cow, gave what, and when.
Around once a month or so, milk samples are taken from each cow and tested for the quality. Milk is not just paid on volume, but also things like fat and protein.
A typical use for this is feeding. A cow giving a lot of meal will probably want extra feeding compared to one giving less milk.
For instance in my case, I have automatic feeders in the parlour, which feed to yield. In basic terms the more milk a cow gives (taken as an average over the past week or so), the more meal she gets.

have2flushtwice

obviously I'm behind the curve on this one.
balancing feed with output could be as good as it gets within the parlor.
would there be anything else that would give value by recording? eg something that isn't there already?

A sudden drop in milk, is also important to look out for. It can be one of the first sign of illness.

Timmaay

Now that we have final got the scc under control, and given that I don't hugely use the milk recording data I'm thinking of dropping back from monthly milk recording to every 2nd month.

frazzledhome

Timmaay wrote: »

Now that we have final got the scc under control, and given that I don't hugely use the milk recording data I'm thinking of dropping back from monthly milk recording to every 2nd month.

We've dropped it as Scc in good health. Last yr we only do the evening sample for the last 2 recordings.

Only useful info is Scc imo

Greengrass1

frazzledhome wrote: »

We've dropped it as Scc in good health. Last yr we only do the evening sample for the last 2 recordings.

Only useful info is Scc imo

What about when your selling cows? Would you not want to keep your high ms cows?

frazzledhome

Greengrass1 wrote: »

What about when your selling cows? Would you not want to keep your high ms cows?

They are all hi solid cows

_Brian

have2flushtwice wrote: »

how do you measure the milk from the cows each morning and evening?
is it manually through reading jars or otherwise?

I am helping on a test project in work where we take seeming irrelevant data and make something of it.
I'm using a car park space as an example and see who uses it/how often, if the regular is late will it be occupied by someone else;
if no other car can park beside it will it be occupied earlier.
above is the principle - to prove the idea can harvest the information. what to do with it - well if the principle works it will be applied to something meaningful eg people flow, coffee choice, whatever.


when I try to apply it to the outside world - I thought of measuring milk per cow.

taking this small bit of information (volume recording) it could be used to:
determine the performance of each cow day vs night/per month
plot the data against the paddock the cows were in (day 1/2/3)
grass measuring correlating to milk output
increase/decrease post bulling and so on.

so what else can the data it be used for - do you use a flow meter or how is it done.

a day milking wouldn't do me any harm I suppose!!!

Can I ask, is it software, hardware or an alogratham to process the imfoation you are looking for a possible use for.

have2flushtwice

My input is to put in cable trays, locate sensors and run the cat 6 etc. The experts wil deduce how to do the calculations.
Il ask the question and let you know.

Deepsouthwest

frazzledhome wrote: »

We've dropped it as Scc in good health. Last yr we only do the evening sample for the last 2 recordings.

Only useful info is Scc imo

I've been considering dropping milk recording here, as I don't plan on selling too many heifers here for the nxt few yrs. Main reason that Im sticking with it is I love my little white book (dairy cow report), brilliant info in that on how my herd is evolving, without milk recording I wouldn't be able to see the effects of my breeding decisions etc

mahoney_j

Ive stopped milk recording this year too,I have daily yield reports and conductivity from parlour and solids etc from every collection .scc averaging 88 for year to date.i have started to genotype the maidens,this years first calvers and heifer calves instead ..coop performance reports better tool.