Free products for fens.

Cows often feel exactly what they need.

For this reason it could be useful to always give some extra hay or straw for free at their troughs. If everything goes well, your well rationed feed of corn, grass and extras should be so good they’ll always come back for more of that! The first day they eat the hay for curiosity, but after that they only eat from the hay when they need it. The cows that take some extra hay are the ones that have just given birth or aren’t feeling very well.
Just keep in mind that the hay has to be tasteful and good.

Even if there is, for a moment, not much good food in front of the troughs, the cow will eat some hay and keep its Pens / rumen and PH stable.

If they don’t take the hay, it means that the cows feel well with your ration!

There are also dairy farmers that have good experiences with setting a box of sodium bicarbonate or salt at the troughs. You’ll see an increase of consumption during warm weather.

Then the cows who don’t need it won’t take it.

Discuss the possibilities with your feeding advisor.

Automatic Milk permission

The maximum capacity of a milking robot ranges about between 150-180 milking’s per day.
(V300 a few more…)

It is crucial to allocate these milking’s to your cows appropriately. DeLaval has created a system to automate this allocation. It’s called Automatic milk permission. With this system, your cows will be sorted into 3 different groups. 1) the fresh cows, 2) cows in a further stage of lactation and 3) cows that will be put dry in a few weeks.

It is your decision when period (group) 2 starts and stops, but often we experience that too many milking’s are allocated to cows in group 2. That is positive for the average milking’s per cow per day, but cows that have lactated for more than 100 days cut in line in front of the young, new cows that have to learn to go to the robot, or go for the cows that have fresh calved and /or have other trouble.
This demotivates these animals which results in negative outcomes.  Additionally, some cows from group 2 get milking permission again even though their utter may only be half full. This results in inefficient milking’s (=time).

Thus, it is important for group 2 that the permission hours are set very high with 9-10 hours and in that period permission is given to the cows when they have enough expected yield.

See Tipp of the Month  January 2013

Minimum in Feeding Station.

Now, instead of the total liters of milk being fixed, the number of cows you can have are fixed.

For this reason, the importance of getting the most milk per cow becomes relevant.

More milk means more feed from e.g. concentrate.

However, the VMS cannot give all feed, thus it also becomes important to look at the feed trough and the feeding station .  Make sure you have the amounts and settings set right for optimal using.

Not too much, especially not per visit. The VMS must remain crucial.

If a cow goes to the VMS less than 2.5 times a day, then you have to ask yourself: “Does she deserve to get concentrate in the feeding station?”

Spraying on the teat – June 2017

It seems logical, but the disinfectant spray that you apply on the teats after every milking session must applied correctly. Now that the fans are blowing at full speed and the windbreakers are completely open, it’s not uncommon that the spray is blown away before it even hits the teat.

If the spray doesn’t find itself on the teats, look at why that might be the case. If it’s the fans’ fault then remove or reposition them.
However, that might result in quite an uncomfortable situation because the flies would be a terrible nuisance underneath the cows.

It sometimes also happens that the spray nozzle, a little or completely, is blocked.
And the spray track can not be adjusted properly either, the technician can adjust this.

In the case that this issue happens just by some cows, I’d suggest chancing the spray settings for these particular cows to “Normal” or even “Economic”.

Robots and Grazing.

For a successfully grazing policy on farms with milking robots, you have to keep a few rules in mind:

• They start learning to graze when they are young!
• The keyword for grazing is “Early” :  Early in year, early in the morning and early (young) learning is very important for succes
• Keep in mind what is achievable, a lot of grass in the cow and feeding little in the stall, or is grass just a dessert, a meadow as a runway, play meadow and then feed a lot in the stalls.
  This really has to do with the amount of hectares grass and parcels round the farmhouse you have in relation to cows.
  If you overestimate this relationship, the smallest change in weather or the length of season will mess with your plans.
• Cows constantly need to be triggered to move: if they are in the stalls, they should also want to go to the meadow and if they are in the meadow they should want to go the robot.
  This can be achieved when you give the cows fresh grass every day and wait to add new feed in the stalls when they are outside.
• An ideal situation is one where they would go straight to the robots when they come in the stall and go to the troughs after they come out of the robot.
• A meadow selection port, Smartgate,  could make it easier.
• The path to the pasture should be wide (2-way path) to accommodate easy transportation of cows. It should be at least so wide that the dominant cows don’t have the chance to stop other cows from moving.
• Drinking water during warm weather is also crucial. It would be ideal to place the water alongside the path to the stall.

“Stichting Weidegang” (Foundation Grazing), from University Wageningen Holland, has elaborated on 5 possibilities, with the correct policy added to it.

It is assumed that the average cow eats about 15KG of dry feed per day.

Possibility 1 is the maximum grazing grass, which means 13 KG Dry Matter of grass and 2 kg of roughage in the stable.

Possibility 5 is the minimum grazing grass which means 2KG DM grass and 13KG roughage added in the stall.

The possibilities 2,3 and 4 includes policies gradually feeding less grass and adding more feed in the stall.

From nature behavior the cow prefers to eat most when she finds herself in the meadow in the morning and at dusk. And then, safely hidden, ruminating under a tree.

Finding ways to play with these times by giving more fresh grass or picking the cows up at certain times makes grazing more fun.
The tree has now been replaced by the roof of the barn.

If the weather is hot than you can use these times by having the cows graze in the mornings and evenings instead of during the day.