Milking Cows at Christmas
In addition to melting down into some sort of Christmas solstice soup; sleeping, eating, drinking and recovering, I have also been playing my traditional role of doing more than my usual share of milking and routine farm work.
Many people, including me at 5am in the morning, would think of this as the last thing they would willingly want to do at Christmas, but it has to be said that once initial resistance is overcome three hours of milking invariably results in a transformation of attitude, not to mention a genuine appetite for breakfast!
Many people, including me at 5am in the morning, would think of this as the last thing they would willingly want to do at Christmas, but it has to be said that once initial resistance is overcome three hours of milking invariably results in a transformation of attitude, not to mention a genuine appetite for breakfast!
Our new milking parlour took nearly a year to commission and ironically, for all the extra gadgets, it hasn't yet cut our total milking time very much. Partly due to the challenge of getting to know the new equipment, but also because of recurring teething problems and things just not being in the right place. That said, on Boxing Day morning, the force was with me, the cows udders were clean and I managed to milk around 65 cows in approximately one hour and 20 minutes which isn't that bad.
The other thing we do here is to nurse suckle some of our dairy calves. As all informed consumers of dairy products will realise, the process of milking involves a 'tradeoff' where the cows produce more milk, the calves have less and we drink the surplus. At the modern extremity, most dairy farmers these days don't even rear their calves on milk at all, preferring to use reconstituted milk powder which is cheaper and more adapted to mechanised feeding units. We are veering in the opposite direction, preferring ideally to suckle our calves, either on their mums or on foster cows, although at the time of writing perhaps only 25% of our annual throughput enjoy this luxury, the rest being bucket fed on whole milk.
The other thing we do here is to nurse suckle some of our dairy calves. As all informed consumers of dairy products will realise, the process of milking involves a 'tradeoff' where the cows produce more milk, the calves have less and we drink the surplus. At the modern extremity, most dairy farmers these days don't even rear their calves on milk at all, preferring to use reconstituted milk powder which is cheaper and more adapted to mechanised feeding units. We are veering in the opposite direction, preferring ideally to suckle our calves, either on their mums or on foster cows, although at the time of writing perhaps only 25% of our annual throughput enjoy this luxury, the rest being bucket fed on whole milk.
The system we adopt is to allow the suckler cows to run with the herd during the day and just before each milking we let them in with the suckling calves. It is very easy to do this since the sucklers actually cue up to go into the pen. Interestingly when they have finished being suckled they are more than happy to leave them for the next 10 hours or so to join their colleagues, eat silage and lie down in the cubicles without be hassled by their adopted offspring.
However, even the mothers of foster calves do bond quite strongly, so when the time comes for weaning, which we normally practice at around 12 weeks, there are generally a couple of noisy days and nights with cows and calves calling for each other. This of course is what gives dairy farming a bad name and ultimately there is no getting away from this, milking cows almost inevitably involves separating calves from their mothers at some stage.
As mentioned before, just about all our milk is being made into cheese by our son Sam and his wife Rachel, although on Christmas day and Boxing day they did have break so we had a rare visit from the milk tanker who collected just over 2000 litres (we're producing around 1000 litres a day right now) destined for Rachel's Dairy. So if you buy Rachel's Dairy yoghurt products over the next week or so it may well be that a percentage of the milk comes from our cows!
However, even the mothers of foster calves do bond quite strongly, so when the time comes for weaning, which we normally practice at around 12 weeks, there are generally a couple of noisy days and nights with cows and calves calling for each other. This of course is what gives dairy farming a bad name and ultimately there is no getting away from this, milking cows almost inevitably involves separating calves from their mothers at some stage.
As mentioned before, just about all our milk is being made into cheese by our son Sam and his wife Rachel, although on Christmas day and Boxing day they did have break so we had a rare visit from the milk tanker who collected just over 2000 litres (we're producing around 1000 litres a day right now) destined for Rachel's Dairy. So if you buy Rachel's Dairy yoghurt products over the next week or so it may well be that a percentage of the milk comes from our cows!
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