Jdunn55
Member
- Location
- Helston, cornwall
So, following on from my posts in all things dairy I'm considering 10 in 7 milking for a variety of reasons. As of now I think it could solve a lot of my problems, even as a temporary solution (may go back to 2 x a day in a couple of years time when I have enough cows to pay someone full time).
Is anyone on here doing it?
The claim is that it doesn't reduce milk yield at all, is this true (in my head it doesn't make sense)?
What is the best milking interval? I have seen conflicting times, some saying 12 - 18 - 18 then, 10 - 19 - 19, or even 8 - 20 - 20?
I was aiming for 7000litre average this year for my spring(ish) calving cows from 1.5t of cake, is this still realistic? Do I need to feed less cake? More cake? I've been offered 40t of barley from a friend so was thinking of just rolling and feeding this through the parlour for the summer when the cows are grazing.
How would feeding work? I would need to feed to yield because I'm ayr calving really (I just pretend to block calve...) some days they would be fed twice but other days only once? Maybe feed to yield in the morning and just a kg in the afternoon milking? should hopefully have my oopf working soon so could top up the high yielding cows with a nut?
On the day they're only milked once, should I still move the fence twice?
At the moment I'm thinking it could be perfect for me, less electric, less labour, less chemicals, less scraping etc, but IF I'm going to do it I want to do it right. So any answers to the above would be appreciated.
My current thinking is the following:
Average 3.5 kg of barley (3kg am + 1kg every other day in the afternoon)
15?kgdm of grazing a day, on a 25 day average round would be 375kgdm/cow/round so for 75 cows average so about 30tdm every rotation so working off 500kgdm available per acre I would need 60 acres of grazing for the cows which is fine.
Obviously feeding fresh grass after milking but on the day they get milked at 11am, should i move the fence again at say 6pm?
Milk at 5am and 5pm then 11am the next day? Any other suggestions to milking times? I would still have calves to feed so would probably feed them at 8am and maybe 6:30pm?
Sorry for the long winded post, just want to get it right and not spend the rest of the year moaning about things going badly!
Is anyone on here doing it?
The claim is that it doesn't reduce milk yield at all, is this true (in my head it doesn't make sense)?
What is the best milking interval? I have seen conflicting times, some saying 12 - 18 - 18 then, 10 - 19 - 19, or even 8 - 20 - 20?
I was aiming for 7000litre average this year for my spring(ish) calving cows from 1.5t of cake, is this still realistic? Do I need to feed less cake? More cake? I've been offered 40t of barley from a friend so was thinking of just rolling and feeding this through the parlour for the summer when the cows are grazing.
How would feeding work? I would need to feed to yield because I'm ayr calving really (I just pretend to block calve...) some days they would be fed twice but other days only once? Maybe feed to yield in the morning and just a kg in the afternoon milking? should hopefully have my oopf working soon so could top up the high yielding cows with a nut?
On the day they're only milked once, should I still move the fence twice?
At the moment I'm thinking it could be perfect for me, less electric, less labour, less chemicals, less scraping etc, but IF I'm going to do it I want to do it right. So any answers to the above would be appreciated.
My current thinking is the following:
Average 3.5 kg of barley (3kg am + 1kg every other day in the afternoon)
15?kgdm of grazing a day, on a 25 day average round would be 375kgdm/cow/round so for 75 cows average so about 30tdm every rotation so working off 500kgdm available per acre I would need 60 acres of grazing for the cows which is fine.
Obviously feeding fresh grass after milking but on the day they get milked at 11am, should i move the fence again at say 6pm?
Milk at 5am and 5pm then 11am the next day? Any other suggestions to milking times? I would still have calves to feed so would probably feed them at 8am and maybe 6:30pm?
Sorry for the long winded post, just want to get it right and not spend the rest of the year moaning about things going badly!