Dairy Chit Chat- Please read Mod note in post #1

Keepgrowing · 20-09-2016 09:37PM

GrasstoMilk wrote: »

What's mineral status of herd/soil?

No idea tbh.
Only minerals fed are whatever's in the nuts.

Keepgrowing · 20-09-2016 09:38PM

alps wrote: »

Gonna take flak from grass gurus here, but I think 18 is u reasonable for much of the year....After calving, peak supply, breeding, poor weather....I set up for 16 and end up supplementing at those times which I feel coincides with a cows needs...Will hit 18 mid/late Summer but from mid August reducing to 16 again to extend rotation. .

Sounds reasonable

GrasstoMilk · 20-09-2016 09:40PM

Keepgrowing wrote: »

No idea tbh.
Only minerals fed are whatever's in the nuts.

Could be your issue.

Never relied on min's in nuts here.

Your 6wk in calf rate is great.
76% here 4.5% empty 12 wk breeding

trixi2011 · 20-09-2016 09:51PM

Keepgrowing wrote: »

Don't understand your point. Scanned here yesterday
Herd 1 Mature cows
94% incalf
80% due in first 42days
93 days breeding

Herd 2 Heifers and any cow with a problem calving, Bcs of foot treated
90% in calf
80% due in first 42 days
93 days in calf
Very disappointed with this group. A few older cows not in calf and earmarked for culling but must be counted. I'm really pissed off as 10% of the first calves are empty despite them getting preferential treatment.

Could be just our scanners but they seem to be a lot less accurate when scanning this far out from start of mating. Alot of press zoning in on these high 6 week incalf rates which aren't really all that accurate. Our heifer herd scanned 78% in the first 42 days @ 30 days post ai. They were scanned again today @ 90 % in the first 42 days.
Heifer herd underperforming here as well 7% not incalf after 15 weeks. Also very few held to first service but most to second service thank god. Scanning the mature cows tomorrow

whelan2 · 20-09-2016 09:54PM

Timmaay wrote: »

Don't think I'm even going to bother scanning the incalf heifers. It's usually reasonably obvious

Had a surprise heifer not incalf this year

Mooooo · 20-09-2016 09:57PM

trixi2011 wrote: »

Keepgrowing wrote: »

Don't understand your point. Scanned here yesterday
Herd 1 Mature cows
94% incalf
80% due in first 42days
93 days breeding

Herd 2 Heifers and any cow with a problem calving, Bcs of foot treated
90% in calf
80% due in first 42 days
93 days in calf
Very disappointed with this group. A few older cows not in calf and earmarked for culling but must be counted. I'm really pissed off as 10% of the first calves are empty despite them getting preferential treatment.

Could be just our scanners but they seem to be a lot less accurate when scanning this far out from start of mating. Alot of press zoning in on these high 6 week incalf rates which aren't really all that accurate. Our heifer herd scanned 78% in the first 42 days @ 30 days post ai. They were scanned again today @ 90 % in the first 42 days.
Heifer herd underperforming here as well 7% not incalf after 15 weeks. Also very few held to first service but most to second service thank god. Scanning the mature cows tomorrow

I assume weather was crap over there in April as well? Could have had more of an effect I think. Did ye use stock bulls or ai? Would the ai date not give the correct figures for the first 6 weeks?

alps · 20-09-2016 10:06PM

Keepgrowing wrote: »

Don't understand your point. Scanned here yesterday
Herd 1 Mature cows
94% incalf
80% due in first 42days
93 days breeding

Herd 2 Heifers and any cow with a problem calving, Bcs of foot treated
90% in calf
80% due in first 42 days
93 days in calf
Very disappointed with this group. A few older cows not in calf and earmarked for culling but must be counted. I'm really pissed off as 10% of the first calves are empty despite them getting preferential treatment.

What was the preferential treatment? If it was concentrate, could it have resulted in increased production in this group rather than conditioning them? Any common denominators with breed/sires/dams?

Keepgrowing · 20-09-2016 10:33PM

alps wrote: »

What was the preferential treatment? If it was concentrate, could it have resulted in increased production in this group rather than conditioning them? Any common denominators with breed/sires/dams?

Preferential treatment is smaller group, shorter walks and lower sr.

Btw no intervention of any kind before or during breeding. We'll draft all empty cows on Thurs and do a detailed analysis.

Brown Podzol · 20-09-2016 10:40PM

Mooooo wrote: »

What dmi can cows graze? I see grasstomilk has 18kg overall intake which suits his herd but I'd be feeding more than that. Would 16kg be a good average for the year or would a cow, hol, get in 18kg grazed do ye reckon? Obviously weather and all comes in to it. Winter diet will be mad up to 22 kgdm here. Two different forages help intake no doubt

Isn't this figure the agrinet programme could give you on a weekly basis. You input the no. lu's, grass grown, supplement, silage taken off. Plus/minus change in inventory. Easy calculate dmi.
On a national basis with the no's agrinet/pasture base are working with should iron out any mistakes in measuring growth or dm.

Timmaay · 20-09-2016 10:55PM

jaymla627 wrote: »

24-27 would be what the intensive indoor units would be feeding, have been on farms where 16kgs dm through concentrates was going in, with maize/silage etc on top....
10% of the herd here would be on 6-9kgs of meal all year round but their the extreme ladies and to be honest they need every bit of it to support the litres their pumping out and get them back in calf

Are you happy with your system? I've just about finally moved away from this system, with the new parlour and pig feeders I had no choice but to flat rate feed this year ha, we still have afew HOs with a +400kg for milk, back in the old parlour some would get up to 8kg/day, and would in fairness do 9k/yr, however obviously struggling to stick to a 365day CI. Getting flat rate feeding they only do likes of 7kl now, fertility no better but as they are culled they make up a smaller fraction of the herd.

This is our 1st year with no autumn calvers ever, in terms of necessary daily choirs I've been on autopilot since June and will be until Feb. Despite milking about 7% more cows this year, I'd say the overall litres will only be up 1 or 2% on last yr, that's down to a lower yeild/cow, however I know I'm definitely putting in a good bit less work than if I had a herd of 9kl HOs, and I'd say the lower output is balanced by lower costs etc.

Moving forward I'd say the likes of 130 compact calving cows will still definitely be less work than trying to split calf 80 HOs. Obviously I'll need help during calving in the spring, but I'd actually rather the hassle of sourcing labour than being stuck here myself doing two calving seasons a yr.

jaymla627 · 20-09-2016 11:15PM

Timmaay wrote: »

Are you happy with your system? I've just about finally moved away from this system, with the new parlour and pig feeders I had no choice but to flat rate feed this year ha, we still have afew HOs with a +400kg for milk, back in the old parlour some would get up to 8kg/day, and would in fairness do 9k/yr, however obviously struggling to stick to a 365day CI. Getting flat rate feeding they only do likes of 7kl now, fertility no better but as they are culled they make up a smaller fraction of the herd.

This is our 1st year with no autumn calvers ever, in terms of necessary daily choirs I've been on autopilot since June and will be until Feb. Despite milking about 7% more cows this year, I'd say the overall litres will only be up 1 or 2% on last yr, that's down to a lower yeild/cow, however I know I'm definitely putting in a good bit less work than if I had a herd of 9kl HOs, and I'd say the lower output is balanced by lower costs etc.

Moving forward I'd say the likes of 130 compact calving cows will still definitely be less work than trying to split calf 80 HOs. Obviously I'll need help during calving in the spring, but I'd actually rather the hassle of sourcing labour than being stuck here myself doing two calving seasons a yr.

To be honest, I get a great kick out of managing cows like this and all the fine details and tweaking the system that goes with it along with this iwould get bored very quickly running a simple system and personally would get no satisfaction out of it...
85% of cows calve here in feb/March/April and then theirs always a few late ladies that slip, simply just recycle the good ones and cull the rubbish, theirs noting fancy about the system here just manual orby feeders/no diet feeder and on average 1.3 ton of meal going in a year, I'd rather have a 100 good cows throwing out 60k of milk solids a year then having to run 130 in a low input system, when everythings added up the extra 30 cows I'd have to run to produce the same solids would easily cancel out the perceived lower costs of a strict spring calving system

mahoney_j · 21-09-2016 08:48AM

jaymla627 wrote: »

To be honest, I get a great kick out of managing cows like this and all the fine details and tweaking the system that goes with it along with this iwould get bored very quickly running a simple system and personally would get no satisfaction out of it...
85% of cows calve here in feb/March/April and then theirs always a few late ladies that slip, simply just recycle the good ones and cull the rubbish, theirs noting fancy about the system here just manual orby feeders/no diet feeder and on average 1.3 ton of meal going in a year, I'd rather have a 100 good cows throwing out 60k of milk solids a year then having to run 130 in a low input system, when everythings added up the extra 30 cows I'd have to run to produce the same solids would easily cancel out the perceived lower costs of a strict spring calving system

+1 I'd be bored with a herd of low input jex type cows .my ideal herd /way of working .grass and high quality silage ,1.5 t fty in parlour .8 k litre 600:650 plus Kg sokids 10/12 week compact spring calving.milk block Sr 3.6/3.8 maby more

Mooooo · 21-09-2016 09:17AM

mahoney_j wrote: »

jaymla627 wrote: »

To be honest, I get a great kick out of managing cows like this and all the fine details and tweaking the system that goes with it along with this iwould get bored very quickly running a simple system and personally would get no satisfaction out of it...
85% of cows calve here in feb/March/April and then theirs always a few late ladies that slip, simply just recycle the good ones and cull the rubbish, theirs noting fancy about the system here just manual orby feeders/no diet feeder and on average 1.3 ton of meal going in a year, I'd rather have a 100 good cows throwing out 60k of milk solids a year then having to run 130 in a low input system, when everythings added up the extra 30 cows I'd have to run to produce the same solids would easily cancel out the perceived lower costs of a strict spring calving system

+1 I'd be bored with a herd of low input jex type cows .my ideal herd /way of working .grass and high quality silage ,1.5 t fty in parlour .8 k litre 600:650 plus Kg sokids 10/12 week compact spring calving.milk block Sr 3.6/3.8 maby more

That's more or less what the 60 cow spring herd in ucd is aiming for. They have the herd made up of cows with the same ebi and production index but half would have a low milk kg and other half have a higher milk kg. I'll put up a proper post later on

GrasstoMilk · 21-09-2016 09:26AM

jaymla627 wrote: »

To be honest, I get a great kick out of managing cows like this and all the fine details and tweaking the system that goes with it along with this iwould get bored very quickly running a simple system and personally would get no satisfaction out of it...
85% of cows calve here in feb/March/April and then theirs always a few late ladies that slip, simply just recycle the good ones and cull the rubbish, theirs noting fancy about the system here just manual orby feeders/no diet feeder and on average 1.3 ton of meal going in a year, I'd rather have a 100 good cows throwing out 60k of milk solids a year then having to run 130 in a low input system, when everythings added up the extra 30 cows I'd have to run to produce the same solids would easily cancel out the perceived lower costs of a strict spring calving system

So (15 cows) 15% of your herd calve in may /June?
Are these milked on through the winter with no bonus?

jaymla627 · 21-09-2016 09:32AM

GrasstoMilk wrote: »

So (15 cows) 15% of your herd calve in may /June?
Are these milked on through the winter with no bonus?

Parlour goes 365 here, all cows milked to within 6-7 weeks of calving, so cows going through parlour never dips below 40, no winter milk contract have tryed to purchase some of the nice boys in glanbia but it's a closed shop....

mahoney_j · 21-09-2016 09:35AM

Mooooo wrote: »

That's more or less what the 60 cow spring herd in ucd is aiming for. They have the herd made up of cows with the same ebi and production index but half would have a low milk kg and other half have a higher milk kg. I'll put up a proper post later on

What did u think of ucd ,went up with great expectations ,right up my tree as where I want to get ,left dissapointed .greenfield kk would eat it up and spit it out as regards transperancy. Info and how to run a commercial herd

mahoney_j · 21-09-2016 09:37AM

jaymla627 wrote: »

Parlour goes 365 here, all cows milked to within 6-7 weeks of calving, so cows going through parlour never dips below 40, no winter milk contract have tryed to purchase some of the nice boys in glanbia but it's a closed shop....

No offence but that's crazy ,all your doing is supplying your coop whom you constantly complain about with cheap milk .

Keepgrowing · 21-09-2016 09:50AM

Mooooo wrote: »

I assume weather was crap over there in April as well? Could have had more of an effect I think. Did ye use stock bulls or ai? Would the ai date not give the correct figures for the first 6 weeks?

Weather was the same for both groups. Ai for six weeks then He Bulls to finish. Six week calving rate matches ai.

Minerals were mentioned and got me thinking but I can only conclude that if 90% can manage with just minerals delivered by dairy nuts I don't really want the other 10%. The decision for these ladies is simple, cull them and get on with the fertile ladies.

No cow calving in May and hopefully none after 20th of April in 2018. The one thing I'm not prepared to do is start bollixing with hormones etc to catch these ladies. We gave up all interventions a few years ago and things are improving well. My goal is 80% calved in 6 weeks and 100% in 11 weeks. Work in progress

freedominacup · 21-09-2016 09:53AM

Keepgrowing wrote: »

Weather was the same for both groups. Ai for six weeks then He Bulls to finish. Six week calving rate matches ai.

Minerals were mentioned and got me thinking but I can only conclude that if 90% can manage with just minerals delivered by dairy nuts I don't really want the other 10%. The decision for these ladies is simple, cull them and get on with the fertile ladies.

No cow calving in May and hopefully none after 20th of April in 2018. The one thing I'm not prepared to do is start bollixing with hormones etc to catch these ladies. We gave up all interventions a few years ago and things are improving well. My goal is 80% calved in 6 weeks and 100% in 11 weeks. Work in progress

There's only one cure for low fertility. I tried all the others, they don't work. I wouldn't have a six week target anything like yours. Id rather a more relaxed pace.

freedominacup · 21-09-2016 09:56AM

mahoney_j wrote: »

No offence but that's crazy ,all your doing is supplying your coop whom you constantly complain about with cheap milk .

If your mean calving date is 25th Feb your average cow should be milking Christmas day along with 50% of her comrades. How does milk suddenly become cheap for co-ops the day after you dry off your herd?

jaymla627 · 21-09-2016 09:57AM

mahoney_j wrote: »

No offence but that's crazy ,all your doing is supplying your coop whom you constantly complain about with cheap milk .

Whats the alternative dry off everything the first week in December, and leave a nice little hole in my cash-flow for the spring, will send in our around 50,000 litres in dec/jan should be worth around 15000 euro....
Also seem to have a couple of cows calve every year in early jan through sheer bad luck, had a lady with a grand bull calf new years day that was due early feb would off been great craic turning on the parlour just for her till the rest got down to it....
Beggers cant be choosers is how i best describe my current circumstances at the minute as regards my co-op

GrasstoMilk · 21-09-2016 10:48AM

freedominacup wrote: »

If your mean calving date is 25th Feb your average cow should be milking Christmas day along with 50% of her comrades. How does milk suddenly become cheap for co-ops the day after you dry off your herd?

If that's the case why not go autumn calving?
Once your cows go in the house your costs double.
You've to shove there **** an push in there feed. If your going to milk on you may as well get paid properly for it, if not get Calving compact.
I'd much prefer that 15k Jay talks about in the spring or summer.

Keepgrowing · 21-09-2016 10:51AM

freedominacup wrote: »

If your mean calving date is 25th Feb your average cow should be milking Christmas day along with 50% of her comrades. How does milk suddenly become cheap for co-ops the day after you dry off your herd?

I'm not sure on that. Depending on land type I'd see the perfect spring system as
First calf due 3/4th of Feb
Heifers front loaded
80% of cows calved in 6 weeks
All calved by April 20th
All dry before Jan 1 Preferably Dec 23rd
In my view on a grass based system it's about days in milk at grass

There are some really profitable guys shoving calving to 14th of Feb with massive calving rates.

Supplying milk in Jan with no bonus is a complete "no no" in my book. This game is about profit not production.

I'm lucky in that we have a winter contract but I will not send 1 litre of in bonused milk during that period. We'd be short approx 6000 litres in Jan but it would mean calving more cows in Oct to get this bonus but the flip side is I'd be sending too much in bonused milk in Dec. I'd dearly love to get my hands on some liquid contract but that's a closed shop with the only trading of contract happening among those already contracted

Now to achieve this is a whole other days work.

Keepgrowing · 21-09-2016 10:53AM

jaymla627 wrote: »

Whats the alternative dry off everything the first week in December, and leave a nice little hole in my cash-flow for the spring, will send in our around 50,000 litres in dec/jan should be worth around 15000 euro....
Also seem to have a couple of cows calve every year in early jan through sheer bad luck, had a lady with a grand bull calf new years day that was due early feb would off been great craic turning on the parlour just for her till the rest got down to it....
Beggers cant be choosers is how i best describe my current circumstances at the minute as regards my co-op

Alternative is a more fertile compact calving spring herd

jaymla627 · 21-09-2016 11:26AM

Keepgrowing wrote: »

Alternative is a more fertile compact calving spring herd

Up the side of a mountain here with 40% of block marginal wet ground that if it's grazed in April your going well, if I had calved down everythung this year in feb/March I wouldon't like to think of the extra meal/loss of production I would of expirenced as I would of run out of good wraps and ended up going in with dry cow crap....
Grow massive amounts of grass here, from may to august and can make lots of nice leafy bales of milking block to use in winter months for milkers, happy with my system here and am kinda surprised how quickly lads seem to forget when the **** hits the fan growth/weather wise like this past spring compact spring calving herds aren't all rosy and plenty of milk is produced off silage/meal and indoors in feb/March/april

Buford T. Justice XIX · 21-09-2016 11:42AM

freedominacup wrote: »

If your mean calving date is 25th Feb your average cow should be milking Christmas day along with 50% of her comrades. How does milk suddenly become cheap for co-ops the day after you dry off your herd?

I'm assuming it's cheaper because he doesn't get a winter milk bonus on that milk so 5-6c(?)/l cheaper for the co-op.

Mooooo · 21-09-2016 12:15PM

On the milking thru the winter, milk price and bcs should decide it really. If you can cover, not cover but have profit after, your costs,ie milking costs, esb, labour, etc. with the price received and not have cows under pressure for next lactation then work away. If not don't.
Esb, few hours labour milking and cleaning cubicles and the extra feed over dry cows required the main things to count.

freedominacup · 21-09-2016 12:26PM

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

I'm assuming it's cheaper because he doesn't get a winter milk bonus on that milk so 5-6c(?)/l cheaper for the co-op.

But he's supplying well into Dec. The question is how come milk suddenly becomes expensive to supply or cheap to buy depending on your viewpoint the day after mj dries off his cows? It's a moneymaker one day and the following day a loss maker?????

alps · 21-09-2016 12:32PM

freedominacup wrote: »

But he's supplying well into Dec. The question is how come milk suddenly becomes expensive to supply or cheap to buy depending on your viewpoint the day after mj dries off his cows? It's a moneymaker one day and the following day a loss maker?????

There is that day though, call it a "magic day", when daily demand on costs begin to exceed daily earnings...

This day is usually around or near to "phuk it day" when you're just ***t sick of milking and you've enough done for the year..

Keepgrowing · 21-09-2016 12:35PM

jaymla627 wrote: »

Up the side of a mountain here with 40% of block marginal wet ground that if it's grazed in April your going well, if I had calved down everythung this year in feb/March I wouldon't like to think of the extra meal/loss of production I would of expirenced as I would of run out of good wraps and ended up going in with dry cow crap....
Grow massive amounts of grass here, from may to august and can make lots of nice leafy bales of milking block to use in winter months for milkers, happy with my system here and am kinda surprised how quickly lads seem to forget when the **** hits the fan growth/weather wise like this past spring compact spring calving herds aren't all rosy and plenty of milk is produced off silage/meal and indoors in feb/March/april

A day on the Irish Grassland summer tour this year might change your view.

I take your point about meal and silage for Feb/Mar. That's only 2 mths but you're doing it for 6 mths with your cow and system.

Not starting a cow comparison thread btw. What ever one likes

Dairy Chit Chat- Please read Mod note in post #1

Comments