Out of parlour feeders

[jonny72]

I know some of this is covered in another posts but !
I'm looking at a new dairy project where the cows will be fed outside in a concrete yard. The herd would be year round calving, there is in parlour feeding using a home mixed blend. Milk yields we are after are 6500-8000l on a grass system.
Would it be more cost effective to install out of parlour feeders and feed to yield and feed the cows with block cut silage only than run another feeder, I'm also keen to keep the system, simple we have a diet feeder but it is mostly tied up in our existing dairy.

 

[thewalrus]

Getting meal into the cow when she's at grass is the problem with out of parlour feeders

 

[jonny72]

I could use the diet feeder at grass in the autumn

 

[coomoo]

Dumfries and Galloway- grass based!! Have a wee lie down ..... couldn't resist

 

[jonny72]

I was more interested in the feed costs of both systems against work savings

 

[Will Blackburn]

Getting meal into the cow when she's at grass is the problem with out of parlour feeders

Its not, you just need enough of them to match parlour output, we've put some more in as we have 2 milking now.

 

[O'Reilly]

Is your in parlour feeding flat rate by any chance? If you're all year calving you'll be needing some form of individual feeding I would have thought

 

[jonny72]

Parlour is already feed yield

 

[O'Reilly]

At those yields, feed in parlour should be adequate, unless I suppose, the dusty nature of the blend limits intakes, in which case oopfs for the cows needing extra would work well, especially since not all the cows would need to visit. There's no running cost to oopfs except electricity, and they will eventually need replacing. If it means no diet feeder, you'll save good money, although lose the flexibility of feeding urea for example.

 

[jonny72]

Thats my thoughts. Just wondering what everone else's thought are
Most of the cheaper distiller products are now not available so tending to be dry straights now anyway