Dookie Campus - Dairy Farm

Latest Report: June 22, 2007

	This Week	Last Week
Cow numbers (in vat)	99	112
Herd milk yield (l/d)	2,005	2,178
Herd fat yield (kg/d)	77	90
Herd protein yield (kg/d)	74	79
Fat test (%) *	3.86 (4.26)	4.13 (4.35)
Protein test (%) *	3.71 (3.50)	3.63 (3.47)
Cow milk yield (l/cow/d)	20.3	19.4
Grain (kg/cow)	9	9
Silage/hay (kg DM/cow)	2.2	3.25
Bacto	Premium	Premium
Bulk milk cell count (‘000 cells/ml) *	259 (252)	256 (264)
Margin over brought in feed costs	3.91	3.42
* Factory averages are given in brackets for fat and protein % and BMCC

	Year to Date	Last Year to Date
Lactation milk yield (l)	1,016,090	1,202,774
Lactation fat yield (kg)	39,447	48,876
Lactation protein yield (kg)	33,456	40,055

Thirteen cows were dried off last week and another 24 this morning. These are cows that have come to the end of their lactation and almost dried themselves off. Next week feed will have to be cut back because the remaining cows are still milking well (as you can see from the individual cow milk yields in the production table). All dried off cows will be kept in one group for a week and then brought in for drenching and vaccinating. At this time their udders will be checked to ensure they are fully dried off and for any sign of mastitis. If mastitis is present the udder will be stripped and treated with lactating antibiotics for the normal period then treated with dry cow therapy if the cow has an average lactation cell count of 250,000 cells/ml. At this point will be drafted into groups according to body condition and feeding requirements. InCalf recommends that condition scoring at drying off so that body condition can be managed during the dry period, ensuring that cows calve down in good condition.

Also this week, we have been preparing the calf shed, cleaning it out and laying fresh sawdust bedding. We have done some more fencing work, hanging gates to improve movement of cows and we are planning to completely re-fence our calf paddock. Also we will give our large calving paddock a rest this year as it has been heavily used in recent months and will create another smaller calving paddock. This will give us four small calving paddocks with plenty of shelter that can be rotated to prevent them getting too bogged and to keep down the environmental mastitis bacteria challenge at calving.