ALTERNATE  MANAGEMENT  PRACTICES

Credit for each idea is given to those who are following the practice.   In some cases more than one "credit" is given for the obvious reason that we see it on more than one dairy.

Once per day milking

In conventional dairying, many large dairies will milk fresh heifers three or four times daily, as a way to stimulate greater appetite, moving out mammary swelling, and a higher production peak.  The conventional wisdom is, if you milk at least heifer and fresh cow pens three times daily, you will gain 15% on production yield-- as much as you might have gained from using rBST but without hassling with injections.    Implicit in this is, the more times you milk, the more feed you need to provide, or your cows will lose condition and eventually neutralize the initial 15% yield gains.

Graziers, on the other hand, especially those who calve in the spring season, and depending on the summer and fall weather may be rationing grass by fall, may go down to once per day milking in the peak summer heat, or after the first frost that stops grass from growing.    Their argument is that "Can you justify the labor and energy to milk a second time, to only gain 15% more milk?"   Unspoken in this is the recognition that, if you do not have the extra feed to make the milk and keep cows in healthy condition, or enough labor to cover a full milking schedule all season, once per day milking allows you to keep the situation stable.

DENNIS GRABILL at Grant, MI and HOWARD STRAUB at St Johns, MI both have tried once a day milking at the end of a seasonal group's lactation cycle.    Dennis (with purebred Holsteins) was pursuing fall season calving, which allowed the bulk of the herd to be dry at the time the summer slump in grass growth hits.  Howard (with Friesians and Friesian-Jersey crosses) pursues spring season calving, which meant the cows would be dried up after the fall stockpiled grass is used up in the early winter.    In  both cases, the idea was, most if not all cows are bred back, in a later lactation stage, and the grass volume is declining.    Once per day milking meant that cows' body condition could be maintained at a time when the udders would not be taxed by having to hold up to 24 hours' milk.    In Dennis' case, with fall calving, once a day milking fell when hay baling (second cutting) was at its peak, so milking was done only in the mornings and a "full" workday remained for the hay harvesting.   In Howard's case, with spring calving, as winter began (which makes chores take longer) the work load could lighten up by avoiding a milking that inevitably would have to occur in winter darkness (as temps decline).

[more ideas follow]

Feeding calves in gang pens

SYLVIA ZIMMERMAN near Lima, OH was also doing spring season calving with Jerseys, and found the bottle feeding of her calves in individual stalls a very time consuming process.   She had group pens built on the south wall of her cow pack shed, designed to hold five calves each from birth to weaning.   She was the first farm I saw to use the "Milk Bar" five-calf feeding pails, which would hang on the gate of the pen and which she could fill easily from a ten quart milk pail.     To keep the feeder and its attached (replacable) nipples clean, she would follow each milk feeding with fresh water, and any calf with a sucking urge would get water from the pail-- reducing the sucking of navels and ears she was experiencing from bottle feeding calves in group pens.

Feeding calves on nurse cows

BENJAMIN GOTCSHALL of Nebraska writes that they feel their heifers get a much better start by feeding from nurse cows.    In the case of bull calves they intend to sell for veal, they leave them on their dam-- which means the calves stay with the cows around the paddocks, and often follow them right into the milking parlor!     In 60-90 days they have a salable veal calf, and those calves leave for market at a time when the grass is at the end of spring flush and the cows need it all for their milking and rebreeding.   But in the case of heifer calves, where they might let them feed on milk for the full grass season, they assign calves to nurse cows-- kept in a separate paddock rotation.   The cow not only nurses the calf, but "teaches" it how to graze-- thus the calves start on grass fairly easy and early in their life.    Ben says heifers they have raised this way have proven to be more productive than prior heifers raised in a conventional manner.    The only "labor" is the couple days it usually takes to get the cow to bond to a new calf. 

Ov Synch at the end-- not the beginning-- of the AI season

TOM AND DIANE COOK of Pewamo, MI follow an intense breeding program in which Tom wanted to convert from conventional Holsteins to Kiwi-style Friesians as quickly as possible, in order to gain the higher cow fertility levels, higher milk components, and better self-calving instincts bred into the New Zealand "Friesian style" Holsteins.     He uses a March calving window (perhaps a month earlier than most Michigan graziers) so as to be able to rebreed cows before the worst of summer heat (and the grass growth slump that follows) has a chance to interfere with reproduction.    

Like many large herd graziers, Tom tried the "Ov Synch them all" approach first, but was not that happy with the levels of conception-- typically around 30% from timed breeding.    He also felt that, if his cow fertility genetics could improve, part of that would be cows easier to see in heat-- so what strategy would allow him to wean his herd off the extra labor and expense of synchronized breeding.  But he needed more pregnancies to Kiwi sires to get the gene transfer in favor of natural fertility to "speed up".

The result was a change in procedure.     Beginning in May, heat cycles would be observed and recorded, which accumulates a list of who is cycling and when to expect them back in heat.   By May 21, AI on detected natural heats would begin, and proceed for three weeks-- ie, the length of a "normal" heat cycle.     At the end of three weeks, all cows not serviced on a natural heat were then synchronized, and bred on observed heats over the next three weeks.     After six weeks, cleanup bulls (raised on farm, from New Zealand AI sires, thus from the cows who are calving in the desired window-- ie, the more successfully "fertile" cows) are turned in to finish the job.

All heifers born from the AI breedings are retained-- and as that number has increased each year, the "late" calves (from the cleanup bulls) could be sold to heifer growers, who pay "Holstein" prices to get them (the Kiwi Friesian still looks like a Holstein, just may not be as tall or as narrow as mainstream Holstein heifers).     Thus, his replacement heifers are always coming from the "naturally fertile" sector of his milking herd.      Each year, the percentages of AI pregnancies creeps up, and the added costs for synchronizing drugs goes down.

Like many graziers, Tom had done a couple seasons of crossbreeding with Jerseys-- but at the time, when cull beef prices were higher, the loss in deacon bull calf or cull cow selling prices made him decide to stick with Black and White genetics.    The positive fertility and easier calving of Kiwi Friesians has proven to Tom that crossbreeding is not the only genetic strategy a grazier should follow-- trait selection does work, in other words.