Milk cows with no grain added??

[saramark]

I am a chicken man personally, but my friend has Jersey cows for milk. This is a small home operation with just the 3 girls. He has been researching whether or not, with good pasture, grain is necessary and what the trade off would be of production loss without grain supplements.

Could anyone give info if they either have tried this or knows someone who does this? He feeds a soy free, all organic mixed grain and supplements with kelp meal currently. Thank you for any info you can provide.

mark

[jerzeygurl]

grain is not necessary, but it helps in the training and motivation departments

[JeffNY]

Ive done some experiments, with grain. When you dont feed a decent milking animal grain, they will drop off drastically. When I ran out of grain, had to buy bagged grain which wasn't anywhere near my custom mix. They dropped off. When I dropped their grain back for a few days, they dropped off. Our vet went to a seminar given by this grazer. He grazes, no grain at all. His herd average is 5500lbs, which is pretty pathetic considering 13-14,000lbs is a decent number for a Jersey, not pushing, and not heavily grained, grass fed. If you did averag 5500lbs into 305 days you get 18lbs a day. That is 2 gallons a day. You really aren't making anything, even though your not feeding grain. The amount of labor put into an animal giving 2 gallons of milk a day, to an animal giving 5-6 gallons a milk is the same. Milking time can be as long, time to feed takes as long, cleaning is the same, washing doesn't change. Also if your tripling the amount of milk with say (Jersey as an example) 10lbs of grain a day, or even 15lbs. Your actually better off. At 2 gallons a day, I rather be raising beef calves off the cows, and selling them off, as you would be better off that way, instead of milking.


Holsteins I feed 20lbs of grain a day, they do well. With grain as expensive as it is now, you really cant feed more. I have a few that would do well on 30lbs of grain/day, or so. They would milk 80-90lbs as well, however grain is expensive, and feeding for that possibility of getting that much, isn't worth it. What I seek is decent production, and good condition on their frames. You should see some rib, hips should be evident, good tone across their legs, etc etc. If you see too much rib, hips are very obvious, etc. Then something else needs to be done. With this baleage, they have all kept on condition nicely, and they dont get fat.


Jeff

[Tango]

I tried to stop graining my Jersey and her cream content went way down. Its probably very healthy for a person but I like the cream

[jerzeygurl]

I grain mine, gives them something to do..

but ive read of others here who dont

[matt_man]

My husband did some reading (not sure where) that feeding grain changes the nutritional value of the milk so we feed alfalfa pellets instead. They are high in protein (17%), and it gives her something to do while I milk. Our Jersey gets 7/8lbs at each milking (giving 2 gallons of milk) and our Dexter gets about 2lbs. I don't measure it exactly but I use a large cottage cheese container as a scoop and 1 scoop full weighs 1.25lbs.

matt-man's wife - Rachel

[saramark]

last year, his 3 teated jersey gave up to 40 lbs a day and as little as 12 lbs in the winter when she was pregnant. He is just drying her off now and was wondering. I think he has fed about 3lbs of mixed organic ground grains a day and these are the results. Would more grain help, or would less hurt, I still haven't got quite enough feedback, so any more info is welcome.

[Jennifer L.]

If you never feed grain at least two things can happen: the cow won't milk as much at her peak production, and she will drop off of the peak faster. If she has absolutely the best forage available,and that all year long, then you probably would get nearly as much milk (and sure as heck a lot more cheaply produced).

When I've had different disasters around here and the cows were out of feed for awhile, the production always seems to drop to around 5/8 of what they were giving with grain. Now, that's not the same thing as never giving them grain at all, but it show what grain does to my cows when their forage is just average quality mixed grass hay.

If I were going to significantly cut grain I'd still feed the fresh cows to catch the highest peak I could, but I'd experiment with the level of grain feeding to compromise the amount of grain vs the amount of milk produced.

Jennifer

[JeffNY]

Type of grain makes a big difference too. Distillers I found can make good milk as well. Wheat midds is quick energy, soybean helps protein levels, and corn meal adds quick energy. I do like that distillers, when I bumped that up, their production did increase. One problem is fat levels, dont overfeed it. It is 10% fat, and you generally dont want to go about 4% for dairy, 5% is max.



Jeff

[sycamore]

We do it. The trade off is lower production (apparently). She will peak around 5 gallons and then level off around 3 late summer. She calved this week. So if you don't need peak production it can be done. Really how much milk are you going to use. If you only drink a few gallons a week, ect. You can get that in one day with a cow. But then you can make cheese, yogurt, butter, ice cream..... endless yummies...

The key for us is good pastures (seasonally here) and really good hay (winter). Loss of condition happens very easily with low input.
We have alot of cream. Top third of a quart jar. I dried her up in January, she was giving a gallon once a day. Half was cream.

I will add in some beet pulp and alfalfa cubes till the grass is up and she is grazing next month.

Many people are feeding mostly hay or grazing with a small amount of grain - a few pounds a day.

[jerzeygurl]

as the grass is coming on now production is way up and i will back off on the grain

[Ronney]

I'm another one who milks cows strictly on pasture. If there is a trade off in milk production, I certainly wouldn't know about it as I am presently swimming in milk with 3,000 litres of it waiting to be fed to pigs, the cows still milking and my autumn calvers due next month.

During the winter, along with pasture, the milkers are fed a mixture of hay, molasses and palm kernal. In fairness, if I lived in a climate where pasture growth ceased altogether during the winter, I wouldn't attempt winter milking as the costs would far outweigh the benefits.

I'm sure that many of you live in climates where summer milking could be done on pasture and I know at least one forum member is working towards that end.

Cheers,
Ronnie

[HiddenHills]

I know there are strong opinions on this issue but I don't use any grain at all and after peak I average 4 gallons a day on pasture and hay. When the weather got really really cold in the winter I did drop to 3 1/4 - 3 1/2 gallons but when the weather warmed up the production climbed and now that the grasses are coming in I have 2 cows that are over 1 year in lactation and they both topped 4 gallons today. You do have to watch body condition closely. All my girls are very healthy and do great without grain with the exception of one fairly new one who doesn't keep weight on. I might end up selling her because she might just be hard wired to need grain... and she's my best producer

[sycamore]

Also, not every cow can do well with no grain. Some do very well, others it is hard to keep weight on as Hidden states.
Mine are doing well which fits in with what we do.

[de Molay]

Trade the jersey's for some Highland cows, they produce beef and milk without grain..

[saramark]

these girls are his babies. they are treated well and he wants to have his little ones around to help. his girls (children) and very small, 6,5,3yrs , and 6 mos. this is a small family farm that makes many value added products and sells raw milk. they have a decent customer base and this is their first year with 3 milkers.
the one milking last year was a 3 teated 4 year old jersey and she produced about 5 gallons a day in peak and levelled off around 38 I believe. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but they seemed good. he would rather she not be pushed and wear out early. he justs wants to find a balance between good production and keeping a limited stress herd that is gentle around the kids and visitors to the farm. they are all pretty docile and would probably let you ride them if you chose to try it.

Him and I are going to start a herd of beef cattle next spring. We are preparing the pasture across the road this year for 3-5 to start and then expand to no more than 30, depending on the customer base and how it goes. We may run broilers in behind the cows to clean up and spread manure around for us. We will be selling chicken too, but this would more be for our own meat. Thanks for the tips, all.

[Philip]

I've only ever kept cows on a pasture system with balage fed out over winter plus a paddock of winter fodder beet or turnips, and always had more milk than we could deal with between us and the calves. As Ronney says, it would depend on your capacity to grow grass, but if you only using the milk for home use and calves (and / or pigs) then an over-abundance of milk is money wasted

[Mark T]

I don't grain my Ayrshire, but she is getting very thin and I may have to start giving her some. I hope I can make it to the Spring flush and then she will put the pounds on again.

But on just hay she has gotten pretty thin.

I'm not milking this year, but she gave about four gallons between me and the calf last year, but she originally calved on grass and then I let her drop off in the winter.

Many cows will adjust to the lower grain intake by reducing production. Others, who have what my grandpa called "will to milk" will "milk off their backs" - making the milk by drawing on their own fat reserves. Supposedly crossbreeding will take some of that will to milk out of purebreds - several graziers around here are going to crossbreeds, partially for that reason.

[JHinCA]

We are milking a Jersey 3 months into her first lactation and a Normande/Jersey cross who has been in milk for 16 months now. Both of them are just on pasture and alfalfa. When the pasture is lush, they are not even interested in alfalfa. They have gotten out occasionally (once every couple months?) and gotten into the chicken feed, so I can't say they have never had grain. We are getting right around 4 gallons a day from each.

The Normande cross we bought from a commercial dairy a couple years ago and they had her recorded at 64 pounds per day, so I know that by hand milking and not feeding grain we are not getting full production. We still have plenty for ourselves (including butter and cheese making), extended family, some friends and our chickens and pigs. We get plenty of cream--the top 1/4 or more of each 1/2 gallon jar.

[Farmer Joe]

I know of several grass fed dairy farms in south eastern Minnesota that feed no grain any time of the year. Most are milking at least 6 to 8 gallons per day, but they grow EXCELLENT forage, in addition to using genetics well adapted to milking on grass. I can say it is by far the best tasting milk I have ever tasted(raw and pasturized). There is definately a lower volume of production with a strictly forage based diry, but premium prices and lower cull rates generally more than make up the differance. It isn't uncommon to see 10 and 12 year old cows still producing in a well run pasture based dairy.