The future of the dairy cow??

[near horse]

One positive story – I read of a couple that pickup and haul(ed) the town’s garbage with a team and a long low-boy type wagon. I know I saved it somewhere on this darn machine.

[jac]

Ther is a tv program over here called “mud ,sweat and tractors” anyway it traces farming in the UK from early days to present and it got me wondering about the Canadian Holstien… the Ayrshire has got bigger over the years and I just wondered if the Holstien has got bigger over the years also ?? we only ever knew them as big.. Were the early Holstiens like the Swiss Brown in size and stature…
John

[Scyther]

Yes, the size of dairy cattle has increased. At least here in North America. You always have a range, big ones and small ones, but the average weight and height has increased over the past 40 years. Holsteins have always been a big breed though. Not on average as heavy boned as Brown Swiss, but a large cow. The only breed that I think might not have increased in size is the Milking Shorthorn. They seem more dairy/stream lined now than they had been. At least the few I see. I’ll leave the why of all this, or at least my opinion, for another time. I did A.I. work for many years in the Northeast U.S., so I’ve seen a lot of cattle to base my opinion on. Take care.

[dominiquer60]

In many places the Holstein has gotten larger, especially here in North America. A neighbor of mine has a grass/pasture based seasonal dairy, he uses a lot of New Zealand Holstein genetics in his herd. What I know about NZ is that they are heavy into rotational grazing and like their animals smaller and sturdier than North Americans. The result in my neighbor’s herd is a smaller hardy cow that does well on grass and lasts more than 2 lactations.

Although huge is the conventional dairy trend there are some, like my neighbor, that are taking it in the other direction as well. I am thankful for folks like him who are not afraid to buck the “big” trend.

Erika

[Nat(wasIxy)]

@jac 25091 wrote:

Just heard yesterday that a neighbour of ours across the other side of the valley is giving up. 100 cow herds are deemed too small and the big milk buyer has said he will stop lifting his milk because he still has tie stalls !!! A more laid back herd of cows you would be hard pressed to find. These are among the last of the old fashioned kind of Ayrshire cows. Dont know how to turn the tide…
John

Don’t despair, it’s not all that way – OHs family history is all in dairy, but they all got out/are getting out due to the way things went. He’d like to get back to it, and I’ve always wanted to do it. We dismissed the idea thinking ‘no way it could work’…but then we started getting more enquiries about milk than meat. People seem literally desperate to get their hands on milk, if not raw then at least from a friendly local farm where they can see the cows. I think this is on the back of Nocton.

OF COURSE we are not set up to be selling milk to people yet, but based on sales of cat milk, we can now justify two cows. We believe the demand is certainly there, there’s people just waiting for the day we can sell them milk, with friends to recommend it to aswell, so we’re setting up a 12-cow dairy once we get back from honeymoon. We’re just hammering out the finer details now…

Mail order and the internet (which they didn’t have in The Old Days of course) certainly makes things easier for the customers, we don’t have to ask them to journey out to the middle of nowhere, they can sit on their sofa to find us and we can post them a regular supply of everything they want, right to their own front door!

[jac]

Cats milk !!!! thats thinkin outside the box Ixy… but just whats needed. Best of luck with the small dairy. I think that mabey the tide is turning in Britain too. We have a long way to go to catch our American cousins but we will eventually..
John

[OldKat]

Ixy: the state where I live is a milk deficit state, i.e. we import milk mostly from Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin and California. All of these except for some parts of Florida are at least 1,000 miles away. Crazy isn’t it? Just 35 or 40 years ago we were a milk exporting state. Now virtually the only people that are making money or even breaking even in this state milking cows are foreigners, mostly from the Netherlands, who have outside capital backing them. It is also rumored that they blatantly disregard many of our laws such as labor laws, workman’s compensation etc. However, I have no way of knowing if this is true or not. Bottom line is the locals have bailed out on the business here much as they have elsewhere.

However, there was an article in Stockman Grass Farmer probably 2 or 3 years ago about a fellow from somewhere up in the mid-western part of the country that was sick and tired of the cold winters so he headed south. He used an entirely grass based approach to dairy farming and breed his cows so that they freshened in mid September, which is generally past the worst of the un-Godly hot summer. He dried them down in mid-June and he and his wife took off to more comfortable locales for several months before starting over again in the fall. Using this model he had bought and paid for not one, not two but three dairy farms in about 10 years. He now has each of his two sons set up with their own places. Keep in mind that this is in an area where the average native born dairyman can only break even if he is extremely lucky.

Since you are already familiar with intensive grazing perhaps you should look into this to see if anything he is doing is applicable to your situation.

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Don’t worry Oldkat, mobstocking’s worked so well on our beef we wouldn’t consider anything else for the dairy! However, we have a couple of things to work out first:

1) where to milk – our farm is one long strip, which means a lot of walking for the cows, and a very chewed up bit of ground that they walk on! Also, we have the beef herd to think about – how do we pick the jerseys out for milking everyday…or do we have to split them…that means completely re-organising the whole place! We would do that, but we’re just considering the possibilities. We might be able to milk out in the field, some kind of mobile parlour maybe…

2) grass based calf rearing. I’ve done a lot of experimenting, and so far results have been largely disappointing. Basically, each jersey calf needs a minimum of 6litres of milk/day for 6months in order to be anywhere near decent without grainfeeding. That’s £1500 per calf to rear in lost milk sales! I think we’ll just have to swallow that, but how to feed the calves? Leaving them with their mums overnight needs a lot of work separating them and possibly even more milk lost – nurse cows is initially labour intensive and a bit haphazard, and would require another separate grazing group. So we’re looking at feeding them ourselves twice a day, and if we have 12 calves, milking out 72litres of milk from the cows, only to deliver it straight to the calves…seems a bit labour intensive to me!

[near horse]

@Ixy 26954 wrote:

Don’t worry Oldkat, mobstocking’s worked so well on our beef we wouldn’t consider anything else for the dairy! However, we have a couple of things to work out first:

1) where to milk – our farm is one long strip, which means a lot of walking for the cows, and a very chewed up bit of ground that they walk on! Also, we have the beef herd to think about – how do we pick the jerseys out for milking everyday…or do we have to split them…that means completely re-organising the whole place! We would do that, but we’re just considering the possibilities. We might be able to milk out in the field, some kind of mobile parlour maybe…

2) grass based calf rearing. I’ve done a lot of experimenting, and so far results have been largely disappointing. Basically, each jersey calf needs a minimum of 6litres of milk/day for 6months in order to be anywhere near decent without grainfeeding. That’s £1500 per calf to rear in lost milk sales! I think we’ll just have to swallow that, but how to feed the calves? Leaving them with their mums overnight needs a lot of work separating them and possibly even more milk lost – nurse cows is initially labour intensive and a bit haphazard, and would require another separate grazing group. So we’re looking at feeding them ourselves twice a day, and if we have 12 calves, milking out 72litres of milk from the cows, only to deliver it straight to the calves…seems a bit labour intensive to me!

Ixy – a number of years back I thought I saw a mobile parlor setup based off a trailer frame. It had 2 or 4 stanchions, an onboard compressor etc. I think it was in a now defunct magazine – The New Farm – but I’ve not been able to find it.

[jac]

Geoff I wonder if a small reefer box off a small truck would work for Ixy? wash down walls and alloy floor.. if the side was cut out there would be room for mabey 4 cows at a time…and mounted on a low chassis.. compressor already there up front… just a thought..
John

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Thanks guys but the issue isn’t the machine, we’ll be sticking with hand milking for the forseeable – cheap, and udder and raw milk friendly. The problem is getting them organised for the milking, we need some way of rounding them up, collecting, pushing them through, and of course this has to move with them every day if we don’t want to be taking the cows to the parlour…

[gwpoky]

Google “Silky Cow” he built locking head gates on an old wagon running gear.

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Thanks! will have a look…

[jac]

We have a tv program called “Landward” over here and I just watched an episode that may be of interest.. .. http://www.creamogalloway.co.uk click on icecream then go to the bottom of the page and click on “new dairy update”.. watch and see what you all think ??? A big dairy farmer down at Dumfries has built a state of the art dairy set up based on leaving the calf with the cow… I think its a great plan providing his sums are right… John

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