Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

Great grandparents on both sides isn’t inbreeding- I think it results in around a figure of less than 4%

Were you trying to call me? 😉😯

I wouldn't really. When dew falls it's going to be washing off anyway. Plants go from taking in co2 and nutrients in the daytime to putting out co2 and not taking in nutrients from the leaf at night.

Edit : unless it's a high urea mix that you're afraid of scorch during the daytime and you don't mind some being rinsed off the leaf.

'Herd is quite immature'

ur saying this about your herd with the last 5years... the reality is that guys such as yourself that are 100% spring calving and have a tight calving block will have a herd of cows of which upto 50% will be made up of 1st and 2nd calvers... a guy near me who is a low cost grass grass grass dairy farmer reportedly has empty rates of between 20-30% every year...

Yep...didn't leave it ring for long..thought you might be gone to the land of nod...

Looking for a bit of advise for a fella😀

Btw as an aside if you ring up Munster and tell them you want Fr2236 sent out to your technicians flask they will send it out. Non pre order bulls like that they won’t keep in the flask as the techs have feck all demand for them. Order direct on the phone and they have to send them out. You won’t be charged till you use them if it’s not pre order. Just have to be organised. If you want a bull order him. Fr2236 is a strange one. Have a gorgeous black 3rd Calver out of him here out of a very mediocre cow. Fr2236 is only out of a very middle of the road cow family himself. Just goes to show how hit and hope breeding really is. Only breeding off a few cow families here now as while some of the others throw some lovely cows they’re very inconsistent. While others it doesn’t matter what bull you put on them - the heifers will be nice. With Sexed semen this is incredibly important that you identify the right cows. It’s easy pick bulls. Dam over 650kgms.

on a separate point if another person says they aim for positive health I’ll shoot them. A €1 health sub index is in the 18th percentile. Just shows the lack of understanding some people have. You’d want to be aiming for €10 +. Similarly another pet peeve is people looking at calving sub index as a measure of the calving difficulty of an individual bull. It’s a measure of the offspring’s calving ability ffs. Grass tech had that eejit on talking about breeding and he got those two stupid points mixed up.

Another rant PTAS for milk. If you have a herd that is on average -50kg Milk PTA, then using a panel of bulls that are 0kg for milk will on average increase your yield. If you herd average is 200kg for milk, then using a panel of bulls with an average of 150kg will decrease your yield.

Some of the muppets advising people on bull selection really haven’t a bulls notion how to work ICBF figures. A bull is only half the story. Don’t get me started on fertility. A DPR style system has to be something ICBF aim towards cause at the rate their going they’re aiming to be able to AI the cows before they’ve had their last calf.

I also get sick of the comments “oh I’ve an immature herd” comments every year. Fair enough G2M by the looks of Twitter you have done fair expanding in the last couple years I’d say but some of the excuses when lads can’t willy wave gets sickening. Like the planned culls and that craic. Similarly a certain type of client quote cents per litre at you when it suits and kilos of milk solids the rest of the time. Like the only time an xbred herd owner will talk about cents per litre is when it suits them- milk price. But if you ask then how many litres are their cows producing per year they’ll answer back in kilos of milk solids.

im not sure who needs to tell them but everyone gets the same milk price. Every is paid the same amount for every kilo of fat, every kilo of protein and gets the deducted the same amount per litre of water. Any other fiddling is eejiting or shows a lack of understanding of how milk actually is paid for.

High ebi bulls are grand untill you get a drought or prolonged wet spell. Then they run into problems and there big problems. 2018 made a lot of people change the direction of their breeding and if we're going to get more extreme weather in the future it's something to think about

My expectation going forward is that we’ll run a nice bit under 20% 1st lactation now that I have the herd heading in the direction I want

but saying that you just don’t know what curve ball could come along so we’re rearing sone extras for that eventually

with the majority of expansion finished you’ll see slot of herds creep up a nice bit on MS going forward due to only bringing in the heifers with the best figures off the better cows aswell as maturity having an influence

that’s my opinion any way

can see ours hitting 600 kgs easy enough tbh at modest litres

Its not a problem till it hits you in the face, alot of proven research into it of course not in Ireland that breeding for it is easily done

I personally wouldn't be milking cows if it wasn't for my interest in breeding good quality cows, 4 random heifers that came in here this morning their like peas in a pod

I don’t chase an ebi figure here

my first preference is fat and protein % and milk kgs

from that I pick out what ones I want. They can be genomic or proven I don’t mind but I do find the genomic bulls have that bit of an edge on the proven bulls