Fullwood Crystal feeding

dairyrow

Member
Had parlour feeders put in. But I just put manual feed settings in to start. How do I switch o n feed to yield. The feed curve and feefeed to yield settings aren't in good and I can't click on them. Is there anyway of doing it without the engineer coming here. I did think they'd have turned up to give me my half day lesson on using Crystal by now.
 

Tullyvernon

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Ulster
You will need your nutritionalist to set up feed tables by right unless your familiar with it yourself to start. If you PM me your number i could talk you through it if needs be.

I had went to one of the training days before mine was instywhich helped me. IV had the some of the fellas from the Fullwood Support help via team viewer which was a great help too.

What area are you in, or who's your rep?
 
Location
Cheshire
You need to set the graphs for feed to yield. Put the feed amount for milk amount in the boxes to produce the graphs. Generally I call them m+ X. X is 0kg feed then 2 more kg per each 5 litres above X suits me. You can set up any number of graphs easy to move herd up and down according to conditions.
 
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farmboy

Member
Location
Dorset
Yeah You need to write the feed algorithms, I used the m+kg option rather than the feed curve option as it is more straightforward. It’s fairly easy if you know your feed rate such as start feeding at 22l then 0.5kg per litre over that. I just made a couple of different ones for low yielders, high yielders, heifers etc then allocated each cow in to the appropriate group
 

farmboy

Member
Location
Dorset
As an aside you do have to be a bit careful as it uses the cows average yield to calculate the feed so I normally keep them on fixed feeding when they first calve until their yield comes up else they will be underdone. Likewise if you have to take one out the tank and dump it’s milk then their average yield will drop and after 5 days will go to 0. Obviously then it will cut the cows cake down to nothing or whatever your minimum amount is
 

dowcow

Member
Location
Lancashire
That's the biggest problem with the feed charts I find too. I have a New Calved group I flip them into if they are going into the dump bucket for a week or two, with just an average allowance. It would be much simpler if the software had the ability to log discarded milk, even tap it in quickly from the meters. And what's with those Fullwood meters? Our Parlour is around 5 years old yet the meters look like they came from the 1980's. And Crystal itself looks like it's straight out of 1990.
 

farmboy

Member
Location
Dorset
That's the biggest problem with the feed charts I find too. I have a New Calved group I flip them into if they are going into the dump bucket for a week or two, with just an average allowance. It would be much simpler if the software had the ability to log discarded milk, even tap it in quickly from the meters. And what's with those Fullwood meters? Our Parlour is around 5 years old yet the meters look like they came from the 1980's. And Crystal itself looks like it's straight out of 1990.
Don’t worry my meters did come out of the 1980s!! The other problem for us is we are on manual ID and as I don’t do all the milking myself anymore it can get a bit stuffed up if people start putting the wrong numbers in for the wrong cow. If I have to take a cow out for mastitis or whatever I just normally go on to Crystal and flip her on to fixed feeding so she stays on however much cake she was on when you took her out
 
Location
Cheshire
At calving we put them on fixed until their average milk takes them higher on the graph. Fortunately we milk the dump cows last so they still get metered. Our gear is over 11 years old and recently had the updated crystal software, which has freshened it up with more functionality. Not really worth doing except we had to because of hardware issues. A new communications interface has stopped the minor errors we had from new, which had spiralled out of control after adding 8 new OOPFs.

@dairyrow have you got it going?
 
I know it all depends on numbers but if your using a set graph you need too be right on the ball every day. You may get some cows who never reach their full potential, some that might have a wobble for some reason, lameness maybe, milk drops off and they get chased down by the feed curve and lose more weight.
I'm running this show and i tell the computer what i want each cow fed and where she can eat it. Sit down twice a week for 10 minute's, look at each cow, consider DIM, fertility status, what condition she's in, any changes in the milk price eg seasonality and if i think she will respond.
 

dowcow

Member
Location
Lancashire
Similar here. Until they've had enough milkings through the meters to get an average, it's fixed feeding in the parlour and the OOP increasing at 0.5kg per day. Then I'm feeding M+ and an extra 2kg/day for first 50 days, then just +1kg until around 100 days, then just to yield. They don't always eat every bit, especially when grazing in summer.
 

Verney_R

Member
Fullwood have a help line and can talk you through it all and work your computer sat at their desk, I don’t know what the number is but their very good! Ask your chaps who fitted them you won’t need anyone to come out. Go look on their website too I can’t speak highly enough of them
 

Tullyvernon

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Ulster
I know it all depends on numbers but if your using a set graph you need too be right on the ball every day. You may get some cows who never reach their full potential, some that might have a wobble for some reason, lameness maybe, milk drops off and they get chased down by the feed curve and lose more weight.
I'm running this show and i tell the computer what i want each cow fed and where she can eat it. Sit down twice a week for 10 minute's, look at each cow, consider DIM, fertility status, what condition she's in, any changes in the milk price eg seasonality and if i think she will respond.

If you have to go through every cow twice a week you won't be getting most from your system. The concentrate allowance is based on a 10 day production average, and you can set the maximum increase and minimum decrease so if a cow takes a wobble it won't drop right away.

I have three main 'groups' that the cows go into automatically based on DIM , they are 0-18 days on a fixed curve, 19 - 100 days on m+ curve with a minimum rate for those who haven't reached expected potential and the 100+ on m+ curve. I haven't bothered with the curve based on service dates as if no bother getting then dried off yet.

I take a quick glance down the feed milk production report to make sure all is as I'd like but unless a cow is being held out i don't usually have to change anything.
 

dairyrow

Member
Thanks for the help. I phoned up fullwood and talked to missed off Dutch guy. Who's just of got fullwood elsewhere and tiebreaker to shift their arse. Something to do with the dongle. But he Been given me the engineer password that does bring the curve feeding and m+. Let me know if anybody needs the number and put it up for you.
 

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