- Location
- Wormingford, Essex
17 total, which is where we've been for a while, culled a few out so these are replacements as such, but more productive.
Our new(ish) parlour
- Thread starter Tim G
- Start date
Whitewalker
Member
I've for
I've forgotten, do you supplement feed much ? Or mainly forage based no push diet
- Location
- Wormingford, Essex
Ad lib baled silage in a ring feeder and 18% cake in the parlour. The silage probably not the best, we made what looks good stuff but it tainted the milk so they're on more haylage type stuff.
Exfarmer
Member
- Location
- Bury St Edmunds
if the silage makes cold and goes butyric the cows will often lap it up but it is not good news to handle or drink the milk
Whitewalker
Member
Yea it's a bugger ,our milk seems to be fine this year although like yourself wasn't great. We did have a taint with what looked the best silage we ever made one year so I reckon middle of the road silage is the best way forward. Bit of stem , a bit of moisture but no extremes if possible however this year was one to forget
- Location
- Wormingford, Essex
Yes, I think we'll be doing the same. Two years ago we had a terrible dry summer, silage was made in June, by July we were feeding bales in the field so we were tight all winter for forage. Last year we tried to cut the grass a bit earlier to give it more chance to come back and get a second cut, with hindsight I should have just let it bulk up and cut in June as normal.
We just taken on 20 acres in the village to put down to a herbal ley so the plan is to cut that for winter feed, and free up a bit more grazing at home.
Whitewalker
Member
Suppose the other question is could there be a difference between baled silage and pit silage? (I have no evidence other than it was bales)
- Location
- Wormingford, Essex
Got some technology to fit now.
- Location
- Wormingford, Essex
Tags all fitted and working!
I woke up at 1.30 this morning and could hear the cows being noisy. Went out to investigate and found they had broken their yard latch and were out exploring. Every cow shows a spike of high activity between 1 and 2am so they must be reasonable accurate.
frederick
Member
- Location
- south west
To an extent it's fortunate that they haven't started giving bulling results quite yet. You will see what a good heat looks like but that might have generated some poor heats.
You will also get some false heats when you turn them out to grass.
But they are brilliant.
serf
Member
- Location
- warwickshire
Is this device for bulling AI / calving and cow health pointer ?
- Location
- Wormingford, Essex
Glad to hear you like them, it amazes me how much they can tell you from the tags. The rate the rain is falling here, I don't think I'll be worrying about turn out yet though!
Yes, heat cycles (or lack of) and health from activity and ear temperature. I was told that they can tell if a cow was calving but it's not an alert yet as they are refining it to give a difference between 'the cow's calving but getting on with it fine' or that 'the cow was calving, you need to go and check her.'
- Location
- Northumberland
Don`t think that is the recomended method of testing the system
- Location
- Wormingford, Essex
Similar things were muttered here, in the dark, in the early hours......Don`t think that is the recomended method of testing the system
- Location
- Wormingford, Essex
The cost of the tags and the ongoing subscription to the service, per cow, are the same whether you have one cow or one thousand cows. It's just the cost of the box to read the tags that has to be covered by fewer cows, but if you had more you might need and extra box or two anyway.
The monthly cost for 17 cows is , my relief milker tells me, less than her mobile phone bill.
I enquired about a similar system a few years ago and the rep then pretty much laughed at me and said I'd never justify it. To be fair, I probably wouldn't have because it was thousands. Cowmanager weren't like that at all, they came out last week and gave a run through of the system and software, emailed a quote that night, I thought it through over the weekend, gave them the yes on the Monday and it was up and running by the Friday evening.
TheRanger
Member
- Location
- SW Scotland
I’m looking forward to this, it cant be far away technology wise on a collar / tag system.
Would be a big help on a one man band system, even if it just gave an alert to say “calving started”, then you can go about your morning/day/evening as normal while keeping an eye on her on the CCTV system.
Had a heifer calved last night. No sign of her starting to calve when I fed them their ration at 6PM. Went out to do late night checks 10PM and she had had a big AA calf. Looked back the CCTV and she started calving 6:30 and it took her 3 hours to push it out.
Thanks, nice to hear of them taking you seriously,
Health to enjoy !
- Location
- Wormingford, Essex
Fertility data has been working for the last few days. Last night's milking I noticed a first calver was bulling so would have probably had a go at ai this morning. Interestingly the computer said no, so I'm going with it. Peak heat was at 6am, although she wasn't so obvious then. It's given me a window for using sexed, but not yet. Probably after milking this evening.
- Location
- Wormingford, Essex
This photo popped up on my Google drive this morning. Taken 6 years ago and of the first two Jerseys we bought, probably just as they'd got off the trailer! We still have one of them.