Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

At 700 your into buffer feeding all year …2/2.5 t meal plus. And longer calving spread ….no bother if u don’t mind it and if done right can be profitable

Looks like she is working hard for you, paying her way.

BTW I see in this weeks journal Moorepark have dropped to 16 litres, 1.5 Kgs solids. And this is what we are supposed to aspire to.

Still doing 26 Litres here on 2 Kgs meal.

I'm doing more than that oad

Your missing the single most important aspect about this bull, he is/was one of the top proven holstein bulls for health traits/pl, its what my whole breeding strategy is based on here, using immunity plus semex bulls and wws bulls with high dwp, its my number one criteria for bull selection, after that positive dpr, plus for milk good solids and type..

His pl (productive life)score is 6.6, yamaska is 2.4, granted he is negative on dpr but his high pl and health traits point to cows that will last but might take a extra service

Imo not a bull for our a+b-c payement structure …..too much water .his linear /type scores a negative too .no issue giving cows some tlc but I feel that type of bull will need a lot ….I’d take a Yamasaka ,,,Larry ,altalawson or a praser over it

They’d need an awful lot if feeding just for maintaince let alone produce 700 kgs

I'm in a similar situation @trg . Considering it strongly with the option of oad. Capital input would be only a parlour. Housing, paddocks in place. Would have the option of going partime with work.

With the current environmental regs as proposed, it has the potential to reduce the output in some areas. Does it provide an opportunity with 80 cows.

I dunno would I be taking on the extra work if you have good off farm career but I totally see where your coming from with the sucklers, I had no interest in converting to that even though plenty of the neighbours advised me, sure you'd be aswell off with the few sucklers and your job..

If you could get a reliable milker say for 3 mornings a week it may be viable at say 60 cows if you could milk that many.

It's the spring calving where I feel the pinch here, especially if facilities aren't top notch. You need somebody around full time really I think

I'd probably agree with you to be honest, without my father at home keeping an eye on things I don't think any type of dairying is compatible with a job.

What's a genetically proven more heritable trait health our fertility, riddle me this also is it a Irish bull our international bull that's the highest valued on health traits in Ireland currently on the ebi system....

Re the salesman dig, I've never bought a bull of a rep that he's recommended pick my own sires give him the codes and he imports them, the single biggest dig aimed at holstein cows is their soft, always something wrong, don't last etc if you breed specifically for health traits while keeping other indexes to the fore also you can't go to wrong

Would anyone milk 3in2 here see its a big thing in NZ especially from around now after breeding and into the summer change the milking pattern so youl have a lie in every second morning and no milking that evening. I was away abroad for a few weeks left dad do the milking had an ad up on donedeal for a few weeks looking for a milker for 5-7 milkings a week whatever milkings they wanted to do and still got no replies, thought during summer thered be some young lads mad for milkings 50€ for 2 hours hard go wrong but no lads arent there to do it, 3 in 2 would take pressure off lads and just reading on the NZ research only losing 9kgs ms/cow for the year from now on? Would be interesting to do it but hard trial or get the father to trial when you see theres nobody else in Ireland doing it

Why would someone put out slurry today with a yellow rain warning for tonight?

Is it ignorance, stupidity or just couldn't give a phuq attitude?

Latest arrival on the farm last night. A cracker.

A little bit of all of the above I'd say. Contractors are always busy and you have to take them when you get them alot of the time. I'm getting alot more value from my slurry this year having my own tank.