Cows, calves and veterinary

Nearly two-thirds of the way to the cows' 'winter holidays'

The milking herd - all 62 of 'em.


Nearly fifteen years ago, I started my career working with a 50 - 60 cow AYR calving herd. We gave the dairy company around a thousand litres a day (20l per cow) most days, feeding grass and a home-mix barley meal (silage in winter).
The herd above is a bit different. A week ago it had ninety-four cows, just under two-thirds of the cows that calved last spring. Since early February, cows have been picked out for low yield, low condition, less than perfect health; dried off and grazed separately. A farm walk last Sunday suggested that the sensible thing to do would be to finish milking for the season with a couple of paddocks of longer grass left to feed dry cows.
The weather forecast said there would be rain in another week. The sensible option was still: dry off the whole herd on Thursday 27th, because the cows are too light and there isn't enough grass to feed them a milking ration. Another two options came to mind - carry on milking till Sunday and take the risk of grazing the extra two paddocks (leaving nothing ahead). Or modify that risk by drying off the lightest cows and carrying on with a small herd on the remaining long grass and supplement. If the rain doesn't come the remainder could be dried off the following week with no great loss in pasture cover or cow condition (but all the supplement used up).
As can be seen from the image above, I didn't swing with the 'sensible option'.
Thirty light cows (under condition score four) were dried on Thursday. In theory the remaining cows are the best in the herd - but in fact, I suspect the ones dried off last week are equally good. The difference is that while the ones I dried last Thursday milk well at the expense of condition (all low yielders had been turfed out of the milking herd on the 15 March, if not earlier), the ones that are still milking manage to look after themselves as well as produce milk.



An F8J8 heifer. There are a few heifers still in the milking herd, the high flyers that have managed to milk well and hang on to a reasonable covering of body fat.



Number 115 - a Jersey heifer.
When the herd test data is sorted by production, the cows with more Friesian breeding inevitably come out on top, with very few Jerseys able to hold their own against the larger black&whites (or the big black crossbreds). Being tight for grass all season, I've been running the lower yielders on once a day in a separate herd and then drying cows as the grass got too short to maintain the whole group milking. In both cases, the herd separated out for the lower feeding level was almost 100% Jersey, with the poorer crossbred cows only being drafted from the main herd some time later.
The effect of once a day milking and a lower feeding level has to be acknowledged here - I've managed the cows this season to give the better yielders the chance to produce near their potential while compromising the ability of the younger and poorer milkers to achieve as much as they could have done. The production of a Jersey heifer put on once a day milking in December then dried off in February cannot be compared to that of an older, larger cow wellfed and milked twice daily until February, then once daily for as long as the season lasts. Even when both animals remain under the same management system, a straight comparison isn't possible because the larger cow has an inherent ability to eat more (and graze more aggresively) and produce more milk. The only meaningful comparison is an efficiency one, comparing food in with the cow's liveweight and milk out.
The only way to obtain such data is in a controlled feeding system where it is possible to measure the input/outputs, meaning that in a commercial herd a farmer can't do much more than guess how efficient an individual cow is compared to her herdmates.
I suspect my herd is around 50% Jersey cows with the remainder crossbred and a handful of Friesians. The milking herd right now looks to be around 30% pure Jersey and is dominated by large black, and black and white cows. Those Jersey cows that have held their own so far through the drought are an impressive group.
115 isn't a brilliant producer, but she's well-conditioned and has thus far managed to hold her milk well above the cut-off points for being turfed into the dry herd. She's been milked once-daily since December, and is a fence pusher. The other Jersey heifer that is stil in the milking herd, oddly enough, was also a fence pusher - you know, those animals that are always in the next paddock over when you go to fetch them until you finally find where the 'hot' connection is broken.
Here she displays her technique of staying out of the dry herd - agressive feeding.



The dry herd, on a gorgeous droughty Taranaki day. Note the condition score - it's not pretty (though the harsh light and angle does exaggerate it).
These cows will need well fed through the autumn and winter to recover condition before calving in mid-July. Photo taken nine days ago.
Below is the milking herd in April last year (there were only three dry cows at that stage). Again, check out the condition score. Last year I dried the herd off at the end of May at just under CS 5.

posted by nellta holdings @ 1:20 AM