GrasstoMilk wrote: » What's mineral status of herd/soil?
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. .
Keepgrowing wrote: » No idea tbh. Only minerals fed are whatever's in the nuts.
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.
Timmaay wrote: » Don't think I'm even going to bother scanning the incalf heifers. It's usually reasonably obvious
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
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?
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
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
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.
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
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
GrasstoMilk wrote: » So (15 cows) 15% of your herd calve in may /June? Are these milked on through the winter with no bonus?
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
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....
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?
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
mahoney_j wrote: » No offence but that's crazy ,all your doing is supplying your coop whom you constantly complain about with cheap milk .
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?
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
Keepgrowing wrote: » Alternative is a more fertile compact calving spring herd
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.
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?????
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
