Is Dairy farming heading for a profitable period?

[dowcow]

The chap milking belgian crosses tops the market at 3-350 for bull calves
Factor in he's had close to a thousand for his culls as opposed to about half for his holsteins
and the figures start to look attractive.

We have a couple of Holstein/Blue crosses that should have gone for meat years ago, but were caught by a bullock that hadn't been castrated properly. It turned out they milked better than we ever expected, are nice and quiet and little bother in with the milking herd and hold to first service every time, so they've been popping out a calf every year since their first ones and will probably do so for some time to come. Actually, to increase numbers we are considering inseminating a few more BB heifers.

We now have at least one Holstein heifer that is a quarter BB from one of these cows milking too. She just looks like a slightly better built Holstein. Some of the best beef animals we ever sold (we don't sell calves, only almost finished beef animals) and also some of the youngest were a pair of Angus calves out of our BBX cows, and they went younger than most other beef animals we sell too.

So, yeah I''ll advocate for Blue cattle out of Holsteins as being a decent animal to have in our herd.

 

[pappuller]

How have you found the flevkvieh? Happy milk wise? Would you buy more is the question I guess?!

The dozen we bought were all stale cows or dry so have only calved 3 up to now doing between 35 and 45 l I think the first cross with them is the ideal but they are big lumps and know whats in the robot as they are all keen as mustard.

 

[fgc325j]

How much difference is there between a Simmental and a montbeliarde?

You can easily add Fleckvieh to the list, and i see from postings put up after mine, that they
are already being discussed. To be honest, if you want to discuss the pros and cons we will
end up with a discussion along the lines of which is the correct way to pronounce "Aluminium",
the Brit version, or the American way, i.e going round in pointless circles.

 

[Suckndiesel]

The problem with bigger, heavier cows is that they do quite a bit more damage to the ground and I assume that they are less efficient - If you want an animal to produce milk, you should really focus on such - £100 for a calf is a drop in the water compared to extra efficiency and yield.

I housed for less than 100 days last year, and haven't fed any silage since April - being organic means you can't buy any in so you have to work out a way to manage these things. I did house cows during the beast from the east, but only when the ground thawed and they started to make a mess.

The biggest saving to me was not feeding concentrates and pushing cows. I would never start to do that now, herd health is excellent - I assisted 2% of calvings this year and have had 3% mortality one of which was a deformed calf. I've had 5/100 cases of mastitis this year so far and 1 lame cow. I achieved 77% of conception to 1st service and 97% overall last year (and was milking TAD at the time) and haven't used any antibiotics on milk cows since 2014 (and haven't had any calves with pneumonia or scours since I stopped housing them). I may only produce 3,500-4000l, But comparative spending is a lot lower.

You just have ask yourself why you are doing every little thing, there is actually very little that dairy farms need to do other than milk cows and move them around.

My biggest issue is that I produce a relatively small volume, but I can actually milk more cows on this system than I anticipated so I am hoping I can bring volumes up to a fair bit above what I originally budgeted for in the next couple of years, and above what I could achieve milking TAD.

Your extra money for your calf with the beefier breeds maybe doesn't equate to much with your impressive margin of 22ppl but if you take on the average price in northern Ireland anyway (Not sure about the rest of the uk) is around 25ppl for the last 10 years then if someone's cop is around for example 20ppl then that £100 equates to 2000l of milk, more so if the milk price is lower. Very good figures youre achieving btw. Do you know what sort of milk solids you're achieving per hectare?

 

[Princess Pooper]

So what is the cost of going over to dairy if you have the land and buildings which could be adapted.? What in rough figures would be the cost to fit a parlour, nothing fancy , enough for milking 75-100 cows

We bought a s/h 12/12 herringbone with all mod cons (meters, ACRS, cluster flush, variable speed vacuum pump etc) which is fine for that sort of size herd (we have 85 milkers). The parlour cost £15k plus £8k to take down and install. But we also needed a new shed to put it in, electrics, and new feed auger etc so seem to remember the final total came in at about £53,000 (in 2014-15). That's with doing none of the work ourselves. s/h plant of that sort of capacity (ie suitable 75-100 cows) tend to be cheap because most herds are a lot bigger now. We already had a perfectly good bulk tank, plate coolers, water heaters etc all of which you would need if starting from scratch, but we milked am in the old abreast parlour, let the parlour fitters work their socks off all day changing everything over and then about 5pm we were able to milk in the new parlour (which took 5 unforgettably shitty hours....)

 

[Durry cows]

We have a couple of Holstein/Blue crosses that should have gone for meat years ago, but were caught by a bullock that hadn't been castrated properly. It turned out they milked better than we ever expected, are nice and quiet and little bother in with the milking herd and hold to first service every time, so they've been popping out a calf every year since their first ones and will probably do so for some time to come. Actually, to increase numbers we are considering inseminating a few more BB heifers.

We now have at least one Holstein heifer that is a quarter BB from one of these cows milking too. She just looks like a slightly better built Holstein. Some of the best beef animals we ever sold (we don't sell calves, only almost finished beef animals) and also some of the youngest were a pair of Angus calves out of our BBX cows, and they went younger than most other beef animals we sell too.

So, yeah I''ll advocate for Blue cattle out of Holsteins as being a decent animal to have in our herd.

What sort of yield are these blues out of Holsteins giving? Are udders ok? Anyone else got similar? Also anyone milking Hereford crosses and how are they doing?

 

[vantage]

So what is the cost of going over to dairy if you have the land and buildings which could be adapted.? What in rough figures would be the cost to fit a parlour, nothing fancy , enough for milking 75-100 cows

Number one,have you got a milk contract before you spend a penny.
Number two,First Milk may take you on,I have shares to sell!i

 

[Agrispeed]

I converted for £1200 per cow including parlour & shed, cow tracks and some cows. However, I did that when dairy prices were on their arse so everything was a lot cheaper, would struggle to do it for that now.

 

[dowcow]

What sort of yield are these blues out of Holsteins giving? Are udders ok? Anyone else got similar? Also anyone milking Hereford crosses and how are they doing?

Around 5000 litres a year, maybe a little more. 35l/day roughly peak after calving, and it will drop down a good bit quicker than a pure Holstein. Their udders are great, but this sort of yield is hardly putting a great strain on them. A Holstein heifer could manage it and keep it up for far longer and finish the lactation with 8-9k... But they cover their keep, we have the space and they pop us out a bloody good calf every year, and those calves are a big part of it to us.