Things I learnt at the Dairy

Hello lovely people I hope that you are all well and enjoying life right now wherever it's at. I have finally finished my placements for the summer which is such a relief, the final two weeks I spent on a dairy farm. I didn't manage to blog last week as I've just worked 13 days on the trot so this took a back seat. I just wanted to summarise on here what I learnt whilst I was at the dairy and the answers to some of the questions I asked the farmer.

1. Cows are big and though 9/10 won't hurt you, it is scary when they run towards you and you have to make yourself look scary enough to make them change direction. This is something I still need to work on. 
2. In the feed they have oats cut up for energy, soya and rape cut up and mixed for protein and then chopped straw for fibre but only if the silage that is being fed at the time is low in fibre. This all mixed together is called a ration, the cows also get cake in the parlour and depending on cows body condition at the time of year they are given salts and minerals. 
3. I was of the belief that a high or low yield cow was just how much milk they produced and that was the same every year and stayed consistent. However I learnt that after a cow gives birth that's when they are high yield, then like a curve they start to produces less and when they are back in calf it continues to decrease and half way through pregnancy they will move to low yield. This is important because they get fed differently depending on where they are in the calving cycle. This is all automated by the collars the cows wear that tells the computer system how much the cow is producing then the sorting gate after milking puts the cows in different holding pens. 
4. One of my questions was; How do you introduce heifers into the main herd? I asked this because during our lectures on cows this year I remember a big emphasis being put on this and how it can be stressful for heifers. The answer was not as much as what we learnt about this year however the farmer did say that after she had calved they get moved to the back shed and the calf is taken away almost as soon as it's had colostrum, in this shed she can hear the other cows coming in for milking and hear the noises of the parlour just and initially she is only milked once a day. They have all been in cubicles before and so that is no issue. Also there cows aren't kept inside all year long in the spring and summer they go out on the grass all day and at night. 
5. What is a ration? it is given in kg per cow, the nutritionist will assume the amount eaten when grazing, then give the amount for silage and maze, after this they add in all the other bits as above and they equates to overall dry matter per cow and cost. That's normally only fed as an extra to the high yield cows as they need the extra energy to produce milk. 
6. The difference between costing and benchmarking; costings= efficiency of farm no profit and benchmarking= comparing to other contemporaries based off factors. The reason it's hard to benchmark is because margin over purchased feed to compare which is normal depends on how much they grow, and some do a lot of grazing so margin per litre is higher as they don't have to buy in food, which is also why calving in spring time is more profitable. 
7. This farm was aiming for more autumn calving I believe, and so from what I understood the average days in milk increases meaning that more stale cows peak in December and January meaning that now there's been a drop in litre per cow per day, so mixer needs to be added to food and more buffer to prevent the litres per cow per day from dropping. 
8. When getting a heifer into calf for the first time you want to try and make sure that she calves at the beginning of the desired window of calving because each calving is just over a year ( the cycle) so by the 4th calf she'll still be in the desired window. This farm were aiming for autumn calving because the wanted better live weight sooner with calves which is easier to achieve when they are kept in a barn over winter. 
9. Farmers are sometimes difficult to understand however once you get the hang of it you start to understand their otherwise foreign language. 
10. It takes a whole lot of people and time to cover a load of crop in a silage press, it's very hot and humid on a silage press and so many layers go into the covering. 

So there it is what I learnt in my two weeks on a dairy farm, oh also it goes without saying the hours are stupidly long and the guys that work there are going 24:7 caring for the animals. I really enjoyed the placement however I am glad that I can now say it is over with and I can enjoy my summer a bit more. I hope you enjoyed reading that and I hope you have a wonderful week don't forget to smile at people because you never know it could make their day :)