I will work a bit more on that program then a little later. Been a hectic weekend with baby not making up his mind if he's coming or not.
Moneo:
The computer systems hold data for both, you may have heard of "Dairy ID 2000"? Well that's what we use. The milking module main screen (or the screen you see at the terminals at both cups on and cups off) show the litres for each cow per DAY at the last herd test. It also shows Days in Milk, Days 'til Dryoff, Cell Counts, and along with the cow number, how much feed she gets each milking (which is automated), and the cow's current calf Sire, shows the cow's expected date of calving, generally three months after the dryoff date. That's when her lactation cycle starts again.
Regarding quality vs quantity, I'm not 100% sure why they take both, but I know the dairy is paid like $0.25 or so per litre, for a certain quaility of milk. We can, at peak times, like in about 4-5 months, pull off nearly 70,000L a day over two cycles.
When I say 1500 or so cows "in milking" I mean that's how many are currently in the milking cycle. We have another 700 or so between cycles. At this point of the year, we are drying off a lot of them, some of these cows producing less than 12L per day (6 per cycle) and getting very agitated since their teats would be getting sore, and of course their bodies are screaming out for mercy.
Right now, we are nearly finished dry-off, and we are down to about 700 in milking. There is another 100 or so to dry off, then the Leed Feed cattle start calving, and the numbers climb up again.
Joy...
We have some cows in a herd we call Leed-feed, which are in their last month or last couple of weeks before calving. Some are first time heifers, and have never been on the rotary before, so they all come as a herd with older cows, just to get a special grani mix and to get used to the routine of coming to the shed. They only come in once per day, then laze around and do whatever cows do when nobody's looking.
A 4in1 is a mineral supplement we give cows after they calf, or they get something called "milk fever" which isn't readily noticable until they are too weak to get up on their feet, Occasionally we get that happen to older cows already in milking, sometimes they can be down for a few days, and if we can't get them up again, we sell them for beef. My boss says that 4in1 stuff is magic stuff!
If you ever work on a dairy and yuo have to herd the cattle, if a cow can't get up, try again, she might be a slack one. Otherwise if she is really trying, and can't, leave her, race back to the shed and get someone to deal with her. Don't stress about the other cows running off in the wrong direction. Most of them will just stand there wondering what you're up to, or keep walking to the shed to be milked. They are a herd animal, so they will all follow one another.
We have mostly Fresian cows. I don't think we have any Holsteins at all. We have a few Jersey's and contrary to popular belief, they aren't as wild as one thinks. They don't produce as much as the Fresians, however. We have a few Murray Gray's. I don't know if you have them there. We have another breed also, but I'm not sure what they are, off hand.
I don't want to milk them 3 times a day just because it's too much to keep on top of. Two milkings is sufficient.
>anarky
Using a 60 Milkaware rotary setup, we mikl at this time twice a day, but we are looking at three times a day. But with 1500 cows producing around 12-45 litres a day each, it is going to be a tough run. Hopefully, we will stay on two milkings a day.
