Replacement percentage.

On farms we encounter replacement percentages of 50% to less than 20%. This concerns heifers that are needed for annual replacement in the herd.

During presentations I often show the list below. How, in my estimation, does the living environment influence this economically very interesting figure.

Suppose you have 100 dairy cows, how big do I estimate the influence of:

1. A good selection / straw pen after VMS:                             2 –  5  cows
2. Comfortable cubicles with nice bedding:                             5 – 10 cows
3. Claw care prior to drying off:                                               5 – 10 cows
4. Safe, dry, walking paths with good grip:                              2 –  5  cows
5. Dry cows having plenty of room to move:                           2 –  5  cows
6. Extra structure and condition maintenance for dry cows:    5 – 10 cows
7. 2-Minute-Check at each round of the barn:                         5 – 10 cows
8. ………………………

The better the conditions are in order, the lower the rearing costs you have, the easier the cows walk and produce and the more space you have to select in the bottom of the herd.

Fertility does not appear in such an overview, but resistance does ….!

Automatic Milk Permission.

This is not the first time that we have Tippen about the automatic milk permission.

Since DelPro update 10.x, the possibilities have been expanded again, hence this Tip.

We used to have 3 possibilities, for the newly milked cows, for the cows that are further in lactation and for the cows that almost have to be dried off.
Then in the first period the hours after the last milking and in the second period the expected milk yield were leading for permission for the next milking.

This has been expanded to 5 possibilities, and in this way we can make the milk permission even more gradual.

We still give the cows permission again in the first period, the first 50 – 60 days after calving, from 5 hours after the last milking. But afterwards, depending on milk production and occupancy on the robots, the permission for hours after the last milking can be increased more gradually. But those hours still need to be increased, for example in the first period to 5 hours but second period to 7 or 8 and third period to 8 or 9. The penultimate period to 9 or 10 and for drying off the hours to 11.

We leave the expected milk yield almost the same, for heifers to 8 or 9 litres and older cows to 9, 10 or 11 litres, depending on the daily production of your cows and the occupancy on the robots.

All this with the aim of distributing the available milkings per day, at most companies between 150 and 200 milkings, as efficiently as possible. And for the individual cow it also applies: both too often and too few milkings per day are not good for the udder health.

We only lower these settings in the first weeks after you have started with the robot(s) and sometimes for a short period if the cows are not coming well.
But especially the latter must be solved differently!

Use a high-pressure cleaner?

It is very tempting to occasionally clean the robot with a high-pressure cleaner.

DeLaval is against using a high-pressure cleaner when cleaning the robot.
Because there is too much hardware and also moving parts such as encoders, camera, touchscreen, which can very badly withstand the water pressure of a high-pressure cleaner.
It is protected, but you also want the VMS to last 24/7 for many years.

If you still want to use the high-pressure cleaner for the floor and the fencing, do so with your Farmersense, so with a minimum pressure, at most 80 Bar and pay close attention to what you are spraying.

And make sure that the robot room is well ventilated in the meantime and afterwards.
The splashes go everywhere and the vapor otherwise hangs in the robot room for hours and that is also very bad for the printed circuit boards etc.!

Try to clean as much as possible with the water hose with sprayer in combination with a car wash brush, cleaning cloth, to have to use the high-pressure cleaner as little as possible.