Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

Interesting trial of feeding biochar to a dairy herd in south Australia.
Dung beetles are further used to incorporate the dung biochar mixture deep into the soil.

https://youtu.be/LaCbEJm_c3U

Quoted benefits from the trial were increased milk yield and reduced feed intake.

Buford T. Justice XIX wrote: »

Anybody use much of FR4854 this year?

I didn’t but I know 3 who did one would of used him heavily let’s just say there not happy ...

Buford T. Justice XIX wrote: »

Anybody use much of FR4854 this year?

What's wrong with him?

mahoney_j wrote: »

He put very little cows/heifers in calf

You'd think they could test for that?
Anyway the 9 other bulls used will probably average it out.

Mooooo wrote: »

Did the same happen with a "top" je bull as well?. Surely semen fertility should be step 1 in any bull put to the market...

And it's not rocket science to test for.
The same test happens on farm with bull fertility testing.
All you need is a microscope, sample and pair of eyes.

Buford T. Justice XIX wrote: »

Something along the lines of zero conceptions. One local big operation is supposed to have used 200 of his straws:eek:

Well that's definitely putting all your eggs in one basket. I use 50 per cent proven 50 per cent genomic

mahoney_j wrote: »

Tbh I don’t put the bulk of the blame at the door of ai companies they have to sell bulls that farmers want tegasc are and have been pushing high ebi bulls as lib on the back of figures generated by the icbf .the big issue is all the base changes and subsequent fluctuations on bulls figures the quality of high ebi genomics has crashed in last 2/3 years

Ireland has to be the only country that relies so heavily on the lotto testing of bull calves every year, no other ai company internationally would try and sell srm bulls semen to their customers, what irks me is they are getting 20 odd euro plus for straws of their 10k bull calf they buy and you can get imported straws of bulls whos dams if sold and when they where sold would be going for 400k plus for the same price, alot of ai bulls dams mothers in Ireland going of their records wouldnt clear a 1000 euro, its farcical really but anyone that questions it is shouted down our not even given the courtasey of a reply, as a poster on here cant seem to get one of them on twitter this past few months

Buford T. Justice XIX wrote: »

Anybody use much of FR4854 this year?

Is this the same straw mentioned on the journal about a month back or a new offender?

jaymla627 wrote: »

the 10 plus bulls is a get out of jail free card for ai companies, if a lad used say the one bull heavily and ended up with a crap batch of heifers, once they hit the parlour its becomes glarilngly obvious that high ebi genomic bulls are a croc of s88t, but by spreading it out you get less duds, and the farmer dosent see a pattern emerging....
Ordered 100 straws here of a bull used heavily the past 3 years on the back of how good the 1st calvers are that i have a good lot of impossible to do this if using a heap of new bulls every year as you cant see what type of bulls are suiting your herd and what isnt if you only have a few of each bulls heifers calving down yearly

use all proven bulls from WWS here in the last couple years... a figure i look at very closely is the SCR (sire conception rate) especially when choosin the sexed semen

GrasstoMilk wrote: »

Hows that? I have 40 incalf to him

Sorry thats fr 4728

Buford T. Justice XIX wrote: »

I'd say all that will be returned would be the price of the insemination.

Fair mess up though.

In sport horse ai. The stud farm takes a sample from every jump and its examined under the microscope before the rest is put in straws.

It'd be fairly difficult to get confidence back in farmers now that seemingly corners are being cut by this ai station.

No where near good enough these days.

Siamsa Sessions wrote: »

Can the experts, who have little exposure if things go wrong, start looking towards the no-foal-no-fee model maybe???

Mostly the ai studs won't operate a no foal no fee as they can stand over the semen quality and if there's a problem it won't be on their end. It's only the natural coverings and maybe thoroughbreds who offer that. But it's at the discretion of the stallion owners.
With semen straws it's a very simple check to see if it's viable.

Then there's the semen cost that can be up in the thousands per straw. Or coverings that could be well up in the double k's. And some charge per cover. Totally at the studs discretion.

That's not to say the dairy cow won't earn more than the brood mare and a loss of pregnancy could be more financially harmful in a cow which is guaranteed income where a mare is always gambling.

I'd say the dairy ai company has themselves protected in their small print.

But it's the same as a bad restaurant review, the pr still harms them financially.
Lucky that we don't have a monopoly on bovine ai here in this country yet!

Say my name wrote: »

Fair mess up though.

In sport horse ai. The stud farm takes a sample from every jump and its examined under the microscope before the rest is put in straws.

It'd be fairly difficult to get confidence back in farmers now that seemingly corners are being cut by this ai station.

No where near good enough these days.

Would imagine that it wasn't a lack of swimmers but some sort of genetic defect that they carried

atlantic mist wrote: »

lad next door used one of pg bulls that only had 10%conception rate, they have since recallled all straws of the bull and covered the cost of initial serve and all repeats, bull passed all quality tests

what i am starting not to like about the ai straws is the watering down of straws of top bulls to get a larger quanity, pushing the use of "fresh" straws for extra price during breeding

I used 4728, checked ai book there alot of repeats to him. I will ring ai man tomorrow. These would have been fresh straws. Very obvious the repeats when you look at the book.

whelan2 wrote: »

I used 4728, checked ai book there alot of repeats to him. I will ring ai man tomorrow. These would have been fresh straws. Very obvious the repeats when you look at the book.

Got 8 out of 10 straws of Fr4728 to hold this year. Had only 3 out of 10 of Fr 5593 hold. Sometimes it can be the luck of the draw. Where was it reported about that other bull being sub fertile?

Downtown123 wrote: »

Regarding fr4854. The semen went though all the usual tests and flew through. It was even sent to Germany according to last weeks journal and passed there. Tbf, its just one of those things i'd say.
Tbf there's so many bulls out there now that spreading the risk is an easy task, especially if DIY AI and not tied to one station.
He wasn't even that good a bull...
I know it would be seriously annoying but there have been many people paid big money for stock bulls without results as well!
Some people love to knock down NCBC whenever they get a chance.... milk recording, triplestar,etc. (btw I've no ties to them just get sick of the same fellas complaining the whole time about them)

Are u sure in that ,triple star never mentioned nor ncbc in praticular nor milk recording ........
Anyway to me the fault is with icbf snd how these figures are generated faults have been discovered before and in my opinion there’s another one lurking away there now (fertility score calculation )ai companies pump huge money into these bulls and its them who have to carry most of the flak when bills go wrong ..we’ve too many proof runs and too many base changes ,also advice keeps changing on how many bulls to use u simply can’t have faith in something like this far too many duds comming thru and there figures tank when stock start hitting the ground .caveat emptor ....

alps wrote: »

Have no idea how good they are, however their documentation relating to savings to be made are farcical.

I thought same for what it’s worth I’m sticking with my normal heater have it in timer for when doing hot washes timer switch on at 1 am off at 7’cznt see any reason to drop few grand on gas,geyser or solar

atlantic mist wrote: »

that was pivital he was used a lot down here, avg results for conception

Ai man said 4728 is still available and he hasnt heard of any complaints until I rang him.