All things Dairy

[early riser]

Id have thought like our selfs anyone going into something new what ever it might be thinks about these things before doing it. Its abit belittling to think someone wouldn't have thought about everything. Dont get me wrong I'm very appreciative of any help be it positive or negative, you need someone sometimes to show you the both sides of things. But im 27 so hopefully have enough life left in me and like I've said before every farm is totally different, what works for one farm won't necessarily work for others. Unfortunately now i don't think there's anything that someone will do new will be cheap, if it cost X and you keep to a budget then so be it, theres nothing you can do about it, like i said NVZ is forcingour hand in the next year we are going to have to do something be it stick with the beef and put up a new slatted shed or change into dairy. From my point of view its just return on investment i cant see the returns on sucklers. Trust me my dad would love me to forget about this idea he hates the thought of borrowing so much, but we have a consultant doing some sums and so are we and if it doesn't add up then we wont be doing it, but from what we are seeing atm it's more than do able ON THE RIGHT PRICE (and im not doing my sums on £0.50 ), but obviously have to think about what or when milk prices falls where would we be then, and obviously if it dropped to let say 24p then we'd be in the shitter! But id think many others would be too. Id hate to look back in 10 years time and think we should have done...

Out of interest what price are you putting into your budgets?

 

[Stuckingeneva]

Will it be easier to find people to throw clusters on compared to someone who is suitably qualified to look after a robot?

Couple of guys round here achieve very good technical performance with robots and have more flexibility in their day, but they are literally prisoners of the farm because they daren’t leave them with any relief staff. They have commented that robots are actually more tying than a parlour but in a different sort of way.

Just my observations, no expert on the matter

I completely agree, but finding someone seems a lot easier said than done, and we have a very good setup

 

[Meic]

Out of interest what price are you putting into your budgets?

£0.35, but keeping all heifers to sell and selling calves as stores. Not a 100% we would do that yet we will see. Like some have said on this we might be better off just concentrating on the milking cows and replacements, plus have some other incomes that we can put in to help

 

[Jdunn55]

Id have thought like our selfs anyone going into something new what ever it might be thinks about these things before doing it. Its abit belittling to think someone wouldn't have thought about everything. Dont get me wrong I'm very appreciative of any help be it positive or negative, you need someone sometimes to show you the both sides of things. But im 27 so hopefully have enough life left in me and like I've said before every farm is totally different, what works for one farm won't necessarily work for others. Unfortunately now i don't think there's anything that someone will do new will be cheap, if it cost X and you keep to a budget then so be it, theres nothing you can do about it, like i said NVZ is forcingour hand in the next year we are going to have to do something be it stick with the beef and put up a new slatted shed or change into dairy. From my point of view its just return on investment i cant see the returns on sucklers. Trust me my dad would love me to forget about this idea he hates the thought of borrowing so much, but we have a consultant doing some sums and so are we and if it doesn't add up then we wont be doing it, but from what we are seeing atm it's more than do able ON THE RIGHT PRICE (and im not doing my sums on £0.50 ), but obviously have to think about what or when milk prices falls where would we be then, and obviously if it dropped to let say 24p then we'd be in the shitter! But id think many others would be too. Id hate to look back in 10 years time and think we should have done...

You can definitely do it, and if you want to milk cows do it, but make sure you're doing it for something other than financial reasons...

I'm the king of Komplicated (with a K because it's that complicated) but this is sounding even more difficult than what I would like!

Just focus on milking cows and forget the rest, you won't be bored with nothing to do I can assure you! You can always look to keep the calves in the future.
Limo or bb on a holstein can be a really nice cross, sold at 2 weeks old you could probably earn £150-200 average or else you can keep them for 12 months and maybe earn £600 for all your hard work

Tbh, 350k doesn't sound that massive to me. At my worst point I was up to 250k including the overdraft. I've reduced that a fair bit over the past year and should drop below 200k this month. So it's doable

 

[Meic]

You can definitely do it, and if you want to milk cows do it, but make sure you're doing it for something other than financial reasons...

I'm the king of Komplicated (with a K because it's that complicated) but this is sounding even more difficult than what I would like!

Just focus on milking cows and forget the rest, you won't be bored with nothing to do I can assure you! You can always look to keep the calves in the future.
Limo or bb on a holstein can be a really nice cross, sold at 2 weeks old you could probably earn £150-200 average or else you can keep them for 12 months and maybe earn £600 for all your hard work

Tbh, 350k doesn't sound that massive to me. At my worst point I was up to 250k including the overdraft. I've reduced that a fair bit over the past year and should drop below 200k this month. So it's doable

Certainly, and i want to do it mostly with the robots because it interests me and everything that comes with side of it and the forage side with growing different crops. But like i said it obviously has to make sense on paper first. I think it hard to put everything over on message on the Internet and without doubt we would be up there in debt im not so lucky that we have a bundle of cash that i can use but im young and if were going to change and spend some money now for me is the time to do so

 

[crashbox]

You can definitely do it, and if you want to milk cows do it, but make sure you're doing it for something other than financial reasons...

I'm the king of Komplicated (with a K because it's that complicated) but this is sounding even more difficult than what I would like!

Just focus on milking cows and forget the rest, you won't be bored with nothing to do I can assure you! You can always look to keep the calves in the future.
Limo or bb on a holstein can be a really nice cross, sold at 2 weeks old you could probably earn £150-200 average or else you can keep them for 12 months and maybe earn £600 for all your hard work

Tbh, 350k doesn't sound that massive to me. At my worst point I was up to 250k including the overdraft. I've reduced that a fair bit over the past year and should drop below 200k this month. So it's doable

All good points... but you have a lovely grassy farm with a platform that you can get cows to, to graze, I think? Imagine if you didn't?

Milk from grass is the fundamental driver with low to mid output cows, and with only 28 acres close to the dairy, the significant additional cost associated with carting forage will heavily dent profitability, in my view.

Of course it can still work, but not the most efficient set up.

 

[Headless chicken]

Looks a thing of beauty... cows must be dry at the moment...

Mostly dry, sod all grass so feeding everything which means all the stock are back to just two farms instead of spread all over the county so but more free time

 

[Jdunn55]

Certainly, and i want to do it mostly with the robots because it interests me and everything that comes with side of it and the forage side with growing different crops. But like i said it obviously has to make sense on paper first. I think it hard to put everything over on message on the Internet and without doubt we would be up there in debt im not so lucky that we have a bundle of cash that i can use but im young and if were going to change and spend some money now for me is the time to do so

Find something you enjoy about it and focus on that. For me it's genetics and breeding, that's what I focus on and have made a lot of good progress this year. If thats forage focus on that.
Some people really enjoy challenging their cop and getting that as low as possible. Some enjoy challenging milk from forage etc

I would maybe start your own thread and put any questions as they come up on there, the forum has helped me a lot over the past 18 months

One other thing I will say, housed ayr on robots is the most expensive way possible to milk cws, on the other end of the spectrum you have grazed once a day milking with everything inbetween.

 

[Jdunn55]

All good points... but you have a lovely grassy farm with a platform that you can get cows to, to graze, I think? Imagine if you didn't?

Milk from grass is the fundamental driver with low to mid output cows, and with only 28 acres close to the dairy, the significant additional cost associated with carting forage will heavily dent profitability, in my view.

Of course it can still work, but not the most efficient set up.

I agree, but if irs budgeted realistically it could still work. The big thing will be distance between the acres and literally shovelling high quality forage into the cows in order to maximise milk from forage in order to dilute the extra cost of production. A lely Juno would be well worth looking at imo in order to increase intakes. You can't afford to be feeding sh!t silage!

 

[More to life]

@Jdunn55 nice to see your a quick learner

 

[More to life]

I agree, but if irs budgeted realistically it could still work. The big thing will be distance between the acres and literally shovelling high quality forage into the cows in order to maximise milk from forage in order to dilute the extra cost of production. A lely Juno would be well worth looking at imo in order to increase intakes. You can't afford to be feeding sh!t silage!

key to this job is yield once your housed you've got a lot of extra costs to cover. Id guess silage alone is going to be over £150t dm in this brave new world.

 

[Headless chicken]

key to this job is yield once your housed you've got a lot of extra costs to cover. Id guess silage alone is going to be over £150t dm in this brave new world.

Issue is though if we continue to have summers like this and you have housed animals by default and not the yields to pay for it

 

[upnortheast]

Will it be easier to find people to throw clusters on compared to someone who is suitably qualified to look after a robot?

Couple of guys round here achieve very good technical performance with robots and have more flexibility in their day, but they are literally prisoners of the farm because they daren’t leave them with any relief staff. They have commented that robots are actually more tying than a parlour but in a different sort of way.

Just my observations, no expert on the matter

Certainly difficult for a one man band.
Works OK here. Me & 2 sons
Me & one son work on the bottling side + lad who works on the farm have enough knowledge to cover.
Cow son was at GYS for 5 days & the phone never rang

 

[pappuller]

Certainly, and i want to do it mostly with the robots because it interests me and everything that comes with side of it and the forage side with growing different crops. But like i said it obviously has to make sense on paper first. I think it hard to put everything over on message on the Internet and without doubt we would be up there in debt im not so lucky that we have a bundle of cash that i can use but im young and if were going to change and spend some money now for me is the time to do so

how many robot farms have you visited ?

 

[pappuller]

Would that 60k be just the robots? So 15k each? I have had a running cost and service plan that i have when they came round 3 or 4 yrs ago and that was around 9.5k a year for everything so i was saying it was around 13k now... went to a farm the other day and he was around that 12k year running cost, was also running 1 robot. The 500k doesn't include cows, we would replacing current stock for dairy cows so we aren't worried about them, also that 500k would be all single all dancing including a robot scraper, and a robotic feed pusher. Plus we have grants and some other things we can take away from that 500k. But obviously we could try and start with just the things we need and add as we see fit and can. I think a loan around that £350k on 75 cows is reasonable if you get the L/cow. Like i said we have priced uo a slatted shed for the beef cows as are and thats around the 150k mark would keep a single cow extra to pay that off! Thats why we are considering dairy. Pros and cons to everything, and obviously every farm is different plus id have thought current debt would also make a huge difference! We are quite lucky that we haven't really spent alot since i came home from college so don't have that to worry about. I bet there are grass based systems out there with higher cost than some indoor systems that are doing a great job at what they are doing

all infastructure including house

 

[yin ewe]

how many robot farms have you visited ?

This @Meic visit as many robot farms as you can, not just the ones the rep want you to see.
Also find out from farmers about service and breakdown cover as that is where robotic milking succeeds or fails. No much good having a 3am breakdown and can't get anyone to answer the phone. I'd put more weight on that than make of robot as they are all similar in terms of output now.

 

[Meic]

I agree, but if irs budgeted realistically it could still work. The big thing will be distance between the acres and literally shovelling high quality forage into the cows in order to maximise milk from forage in order to dilute the extra cost of production. A lely Juno would be well worth looking at imo in order to increase intakes. You can't afford to be feeding sh!t silage!

Yes totally, we wouldn't be too bad distance wise, our furthest block of land would be 3.5 miles away and everything else working back towards the farm. Would hopefully try to do good quality silage and was thinking about Triticale and Lupins whole crop, and playing with the idea would growing red clover as a protein source? I haven't looked in to that yet, we have done it for our sheep and growing cattle so not sure how it would do milk wise? But id like to think we could do quite well on the forage side of things as we already do nice silage and Reseed regularly

 

[som farmer]

Yes totally, we wouldn't be too bad distance wise, our furthest block of land would be 3.5 miles away and everything else working back towards the farm. Would hopefully try to do good quality silage and was thinking about Triticale and Lupins whole crop, and playing with the idea would growing red clover as a protein source? I haven't looked in to that yet, we have done it for our sheep and growing cattle so not sure how it would do milk wise? But id like to think we could do quite well on the forage side of things as we already do nice silage and Reseed regularly

l think in the near future, especially if summers are going to be hotter and drier, alternative crops, for forage will become more prevalent, especially if you can double crop, or 3 in two years. The way things are going, for many, grass isn't as reliable, as it once was. That could be a hiccup, or the future, nobody knows.
Bulk high quality fodder, is a must, and may well be an arable silage type crop, that gets cut once, rather than a multi cut grass system, which is looking towards getting dearer to harvest.. Maize is the obvious bulk crop, but not always practical. There is plenty of info on the net, you just have to sort the possible, from the impossible. We have found hybrid rye, with vetches, followed by maize, capable of 30 ton/acre off the field, but timing is very tight to achieve that.

 

[Holsteinfriesian90]

l think in the near future, especially if summers are going to be hotter and drier, alternative crops, for forage will become more prevalent, especially if you can double crop, or 3 in two years. The way things are going, for many, grass isn't as reliable, as it once was. That could be a hiccup, or the future, nobody knows.
Bulk high quality fodder, is a must, and may well be an arable silage type crop, that gets cut once, rather than a multi cut grass system, which is looking towards getting dearer to harvest.. Maize is the obvious bulk crop, but not always practical. There is plenty of info on the net, you just have to sort the possible, from the impossible. We have found hybrid rye, with vetches, followed by maize, capable of 30 ton/acre off the field, but timing is very tight to achieve that.

Not many mention fodder beet on this forum. They will do 30-35 tons an acre sometimes more. Least they will grow in any weather once established.

 

[rusty]

Hello, just looking for some help. We are THINKING about going into dairy out of Beef & Sheep, biggest reason being the NVZ thats coming in to Wales we are going to need to spend to get a larger slurry store ect and i don't really want to spend all that money when you have little return on investment. I know we would be spending a lot more going into dairy but the returns are or should be better! Saying this we are looking at a robot, putting in a new shed on slats and starting around that 70-75 head of cows calving all year round to keep that robot always milking 55-60 cows. They would be housed all year round, this is just due to our farm fragmentation and looking forward where if we were milking conventionally in parlour we couldn't expand due to there not being any more land around us that will come up for sale. Atleast if they were housed i can carry silage from a reasonable distance from farm. We would be supplying a cheese plant so would need a cow with good solids, so just wanted to know what cows would you suggest. Would like a cow that does around the 8000+L/cow and ideally we are looking for a cow that will produce a good quality calf too as we would like to keep them as stores. I do like the Ayrshire cow for solids of milk and the Fleckvieh cow for her calves. If you have a robot i would love to hear what you have to say regarding L/cow and Kg/cow fed.

I am part of a benchmarking group with my milk buyer. We have a reasonable number of robot farms in the group. One guy has very high yields and is making good money and is a really top operator. Most of the rest have yields around 9000 litres but with high costs and don’t appear to be making much for the effort they put in. From my limited view point I am not convinced robots work with a medium output scenario financially.