what’s a low a yielding cow ?
5500
Well I suppose it depends on what kind of cows you are happy with. If you don't look at type will you end up with the kind of cow you want or are you content with what you get. It is possible to breed the cows you want.
Bull here gone wicked over the last couple of days. I wanted to let him out with heifers on Tuesday or Wednesday but a family friendthat is a factory agent is looking at him tomorrow. I need a replacement to go with heifers and feck all Angus breeders around here. Aubrac are meant to be easy calved and a local man here has some for sale. Anyone any experience?
There is nothing special about those teats. Some of mine are like that, some are longer and skinnier, some are just skinnier. The teats seem to be soft as much as anything else and they leave down the milk very fast too I think. They are getting better here but still falling off a bit.
Can you not except its your clusters/milking machince thats the issue, first dairy farmer ive heard giving out about cows milking out to fast, its a trait been breed for now, with the popularity of robots…
The teats are too thin that's the issue with his ones its just coming through from a different bull somewhere along the line
a cow that has good feet and legs, a good udder that’s well attached and a medium size cow is what I really only look for in a cow, we’d cull a cow for those here or she’d get a beef straw if I didn’t like her type for us. Would only breed heifers off of the cows I like that are doing the milk solids. I’m breeding for my type of cows I would say but I wouldn’t be picking a bull to go on them based on type
I've used them for years on heifers and in general the aubrac are easy calving, but like all breeds there is a range. I always found the icbf figures accurate, I'd be looking for about 2.5%CD for dairy cows to be comfortable with heifers.
They grow into good calves if they're well fed.
How come we have this little argument every month, not that I don't enjoy it. Surely we should be talking kgs of solids. That's what we get paid for.
I'm in awe of the figures you post here regularly, you have great cows and a great farmer. But we had those big Holstein cows 30 years ago, and it was one fucccking problem after another. I truly think it was the farm was not good enough to feed them. Mastitis prone, lethargic, infertile huers.
These conversations are fine, but you don't want to mislead any young fella. If you are going high yielding, you go high feeding, they won't do well picking around the rushes, and they will need some better fodder than grass to achieve their full potential.
Give me a 5500l cow any day, go in calf, calf, out the door and will be waiting at the gate every evening for milking
The thing is if you had paid attention to the linear traits you wouldn't need to cull those cows because you wouldn't have bred that type of cow in the first place. That's why in every other country that I am aware of they breed according to type traits as well as production, but the geniuses here in ICBF and Teagasc think you can do it by numbers.
Breeding and management has improved 10 fold since then too …..7500 /8000 litre cow with good -% 600 kgms and fertility is achievable far easier now
I cull a handful of cows every year, it’s about 2% this year that aren’t getting bred, every other cow I would gladly milk next year. Of the few I’ve selected for culling they’d be a mix of reasons and not solely type
Angus sale in Thurles on Wednesday
Surely you have a young bull for grueller
Nope, all sold. Halter training 2 x 9 month olds atm
I'd actually rather an Aubrac, no offence to anyone. They are meant to be easy calved, Hardy calves and good growth rates. Much like an Angus really but the father here still has a few sucklers and the bull might be used to breed some of those too and he wouldn't mind keeping a few heifers from Aubrac. Just ticks more boxes.
The Aubrac are fine looking cattle, and their are a few pedigree breeders here around skibbereen, but if you are selling calfs, they don't seem to have caught on.
Weight better and grade better than Angus on the hook. Have them in the suckler herd and also buy in some dairy bred aubrac. Calve like jerseys but after a week you won't know your calf. Great vigour when born. 6 years of using them and very happy as a part time suckler farmer. Had a tough calving season this year with a few legs down and 2 backwards, putting it down to the long winter in the sheds
I don't see anyone moving away from grass based production in West cork if anything the past 12 months has seen a doubling down as fellas react to regulation changes.there seems to be no appetite for maize wholecrop if any thing the contractors are telling me acerage are falling which over the past few years since quota abolition which has surprised me .I would contend that the west cork milk production model based on calving to grass with low overheads and a long grazing on moderate sized family farms is the most efficient and environmental friendly and sustainable in the world. That's my opinion
Until you have to rent 30 more acres at 500 an acre just to maintain your current set up.…and then the realisation comes that there isn't enough room for everyone, and then the coop is back 42% of supply (predicted)..and then..
Most of West Cork is still at 250.
Excellent KG!
Would you like to elaborate on ‘the most sustainable in the world’ claim?
You could address the efficiency and environmentally friendliness claims also..if you’ve the time.
To be fair dawg I have been thinking since there is one aspect of our production system that is not very environmentally friendly. you have me there
Teagasc and the greens recommended new milking machine under Tams
https://youtube.com/shorts/Oyc9c1q0RRU?si=R_UgIDTgsd1qzl9H
Great day here In West Cork, the grass grew more today than the whole month of april
With the general morale of farmers pretty low right now, it’s no harm to boost the spirits a bit. There’s probably a Kazakh dairy farmer making similar claims about the dairy industry of Kazakhstan!
In other news, cows brought in full time since Saturday due to torrential rains.
Alot of west cork dairy farmers take off to lanzarote when the cows are dry 2/3week in January so in fairness we probaly do more damage to the environment that week than if we were at home loading the diet feeder
Thought this may be on interest to everyone. A dairy farm that’s nearly 100 kilometres squared in size. 9,500 hectares which is 23,475 acres. They’re milking 8,500 cows. It seems to actually be ran as 8 independent dairy farms but the land is in 1 block. There does seem to a be a lot of waste with the land as well. Apparently that area gets 40 inches of rain per year and because it’s in Tasmania and is that bit more south it wouldn’t be overly hot during the summer either. https://www.commercialrealestate.com.au/property/woolnorth-road-woolnorth-tas-7330-2019209370
It's a grass based system so cows can only walk so far. Even a cow to an acre. There is only 250 acres approx in a sq kilometre. What is the most a cow should be walking twice a day......2-3 Km? Probably running in mobs of 3-400 and milking continually in the parlours, with herds @1k based in blocks around the parlours.
it’s a half hour drive from the nearest town of 3,000 people as well, there’s no village or anything that’s closer. Apparently all of Tasmania which is about the size of the 26 counties here only has a population of 500,000 and half of them live in 1 city alone. The whole place sounds unimaginably sparsely populated. Don’t know how they’d even manage with getting ration for cows or the milk collected
