Micro Dairy

Hallam.d

New Member
Looking to set up a very small Micro Dairy or probably around 3-4 milking cows to run as a sort of diversification project along side working. I'm keen on a beef cross or maybe a fleckvieh type breed to use, milking once a day. Can anybody tell me what sort of yield I would be looking at for an animal that has been OAD its whole production life? It would be an entirely forage based system (the only concentrates being a small incentive to come into the parlour), then cows dried off, moved indoors and fed silage/hay over winter. From my research I'm imagining an average of around the 3500 mark? And any idea of the average number of days in milk I can expect?

The milk will be sold direct to customers after being pasteurised. A simple line from cow to pasteuriser to bottle to customer. What would be the rules and regs around doing this? Who do I need to inform and be checked by etc. A sort of how to guide would be ideal if anybody has experience of this.

Any other advice or experience would be hugely appreciated.

Many thanks
 

Treg

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Cornwall
Is this of any interest...
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
Is this of any interest...
always some thing to learn, never new there was a difference between pasturised and homogenised, other than the cream line ! So homogenised, produces 'bad' cholestriol, while straight pasturised doesn't. Bet arla muller etc don't say that. Oppurtunity ?
 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
Good explaination of homogenised / pasturised / standardised here
Though I don`t agree with his theory that batch pasturisation is better than continuous flow

 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
then cows dried off, moved indoors and fed silage/hay over winter
Problem with no milk over winter. - You spend all summer building up bottled milk customers then in autumn you tell them, sorry no milk for 4 months. By next spring they will have got in the habit of buying milk elsewhere.
In that situation maybe something like cheese that you can make & store would be better. Then you have a product to sell for.12 months
or, Demand for Ice Cream fits in with summer milk production
 
Looking to set up a very small Micro Dairy or probably around 3-4 milking cows to run as a sort of diversification project along side working. I'm keen on a beef cross or maybe a fleckvieh type breed to use, milking once a day. Can anybody tell me what sort of yield I would be looking at for an animal that has been OAD its whole production life? It would be an entirely forage based system (the only concentrates being a small incentive to come into the parlour), then cows dried off, moved indoors and fed silage/hay over winter. From my research I'm imagining an average of around the 3500 mark? And any idea of the average number of days in milk I can expect?

The milk will be sold direct to customers after being pasteurised. A simple line from cow to pasteuriser to bottle to customer. What would be the rules and regs around doing this? Who do I need to inform and be checked by etc. A sort of how to guide would be ideal if anybody has experience of this.

Any other advice or experience would be hugely appreciated.

Many thanks
I have just started calving a jersey cross herd for OAD milking, i'll calve 60 this spring if all goes to plan, 3 calved so far.
If you have a beef type animal I think your wasting your time, it wont be efficent. I also think with fleckvieh you will have an animal that can produce good volume which may not be suited to OAD. The cow may develop mastitus etc.

I was recently at a Once a Day Milking conference in Tipperary. The ideal cow is Jersey or Jersey cross, expect less than 3000l from heifers and you are getting to an upper limit of around 4,000l.
Smaller cow for your system is easier managed and easier fed.
My plan which is constantly evolving is to get 3000l from my heifers this year on 300kg of concentrate and 9% solids. We get paid for solids not litres. Year 2, i hope to push 3500+
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,292
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
Top