Question for Dairymen/women? How long in the barn?

[francismilker]

The question I have is regarding time at the feed trough in the milking parlor. I realize some of you dairy men and women are working toward grass-based dairying, but to those of you who use feed in the milk parlor, my question is this: On average, how long are your cows exposed to feed while in the barn? I've been working with my daughter's 4-H show steers for the past three years and we've worked hard on getting a good "rate-of-gain" as part of the show's final standing is based upon rate of gain and carcass.

From the books and literature I've read, there seems to be some correlation between the amount of feed, appetite, and amount of time an animal stands at the trough. Some say that an animals appetite should be such that it cleans it feed up in about twenty minutes while others say to keep feed in front of the animal at all times. I can see the advantage of the twenty minute rule because the feed would be fresher and wetter out of the bag if consumed quickly. However, the animals my daughter has shown seem to pick at the feed delicately and don't consume over five pounds at a time.

When I worked on the dairy as a kid, I remember each animal having a colored tag in their ear that represented a predetermined amount of feed to dial into each trough as the string of four cows came into the double four parlor. The dairyman had it figured out pretty good on his cows so that when those four cows were cleaned, prestripped, milked, and post-dipped they had just cleaned out their individual feed bins and were ready to exit the parlor. The amount of time they spent in the barn isn't fresh on my mind, but I think it probably took about fifteen minutes for them to be in and out of the barn. (just a guess on the time) The dairyman once told me he liked to get at least 25lbs. of grain down them and all the alfalfa hay they could eat in a day's time.

While I realize these cows were not a beef steer that had to gain a lot of weight, they did have a demanding lifestlye and high production expectations. It takes a lot of feed,roughage, and water intake to make 100lbs. of milk a day. So, with these parameters, how or what kind of feed regiment do you guys use to keep your cows healthy and get good milk production? With the nurse cows I'm using at the time, some of them are easier keepers than others. One of my cows does a real good job converting and stays fat raising four calves on 10lbs. grain per day and being on good grass pasture. Some of the others though need 20+lbs. per day to raise the same number of calves with the same free choice pasture and coming in to meet the calves twice a day. How do you guys do it? I'm wondering if there might be some form of nutrient they're missing out on. All I'm doing at the time is keeping them on good, clean bermuda hay and feeding them 14% cake like my beef cows in the lease pasture. They are also on clean water trough with a free choice mineral feeder available at all times. Do you guys supplement the cows in your milk string with some kind of "dairy supplement"?

Thanks for all the input you can give me on animal health. While I don't have "skinny" issues with my beef cows, some of my milkers are looking pretty poor being just dried off and being 7+ months bred. This last stage of pregnancy for the girls is very hard to gain weight on so I don't want to start another season of nurse cows with poor herd health.

[DaleK]

Sounds to me like you're way short on energy for some of your cows and probably protein as well depending how your hay tests. We're on a TMR with 18lbs/cow of rolled high moisture corn and 9lbs of a custom supplement which is mostly DDG and mineral now, plus 20lbs of baleage and about 55lbs/head of corn silage. Can you get any corn silage?

I don't know anybody here with a parlour who actually still feeds in it. Most cut the feeders out and replaced them with water bowls. Our cows have feed in front of them at least 23.5 hours a day. The tiestall cows have their bunks cleaned every morning, freestall cows every night.

You need to think about getting your hay tested and talking to a nutritionist.

[sammyd]

Our cows had feed in front of them constantly, and if we weren't feeding them we were sweeping in, that gets them reinterested in the feed.
I haven't seen anyone feed in a parlor for many years but it used to be the thing to give them grain while in there.
We used to feed as much corn or hay silage as they could eat 4 times a day, high moisture corn twice daily along with soybean meal and a half a bale of hay for overnight.
Corn and bean amounts varied by cow depending on what DHIA tests said and what the silage tested at.
I would also say to get your hay tested so you know what you are working with.

I feed a 14% mix but my hay tests at over 20% CP some as far up as 26%.

[jerzeygurl]

the milk cow cleans her feed in 15 minutes,2 times a day, then has hay in front of her all day( or green grass) her feed is a mixture of corn oats soy cottonseed and molasass about 14-16 percent protien. The hay is good mixed pasture of clover timothy ect. The other cows dont get the dairy feed, but get mineral hay and some corn,esp when its so cold.
vet advised me to feed our bull calf and oxling a measured gallon each of 12-14 percent feed a day, said anything higher was too rich for them, plus their hay which is there all day.

[francismilker]

If dairyman are not feeding in the barn anymore, how do you keep the cows content during all the washing, prestripping, and milking. Sometimes when I was a kid, if it wasn't for a full feed pan in front of a few "outlaws" we wouldn't have gotten them milked. They would've been culled but they were 100lbs per day cows.

[Calfkeeper]

We still feed in the milking parlor. They are in there about 10-15 minutes depending on how long they take to milk. They get about 18 lbs of dairy feed/grain/ration, whatever you call it, twice a day during milking. Then they get a certain percentage of alfalfa and also grass hay. Dunno the exact poundage of the last two, but husband rations it out to them every day.

[sammyd]

In a barn you can feed no problem. In a parlor situation emphasis is on numbers per hour so you don't mess around with feed in there. And with the advent of TMR and automated supplement feeders activated by collar transponders it's no longer done.
Once the cow figures it out you don't have the issues. But since cows are creatures of habit it can take some time to get them used to the idea.
I've seen dairies cull good producers because they wouldn't conform to the parlor but usually they put up with them and when they come out of their next dry period and are put in the milking string they will learn the new routine. It's usually the older cows that have problems.
Now that I'm thinking about it, even when we milked in tie stalls the grain was fed at least a half hour prior to milking so you didn't have them lunging about trying to get the next cows stuff, the feeding frenzy was over before the milkers came out.

[gone-a-milkin]

I have found that by not feeding in the parlor, the cows actually stand BETTER...well, after the first week or so.. they aren't nearly as pushy and w/o banging their heads around to get more grain to fall out of the chute. All the grain is mixed w/ forage now and the cows take in more that way, IMO.

I also agree w/ talking to a nutritionist/testing your feed. It is amazing what you can learn from somebody who KNOWS the ratios. Sometimes just a simple tweak to the feed makes the biggest difference.

[Up North]

Cows have about ten minutes to eat roughly 8 pounds of 16 % dairy grain at each milking. We feed in the milking parlor with the Clay feeders, because that's the system in place when we moved here.
If we were building new or remodeling we would not feed in the milking parlor. It causes disruption and bad behavior by the "Outlaws" as you say.
The Grain Dust in the environment clogs up the pulsators and creates more cleaning jobs. We don't like feeding in the parlor, but for the moment we have bigger Dragons to Slay before we change that system.

FM do your cows have free-choice salt?

[francismilker]

UpNorth, I guess you could say they have freechoice salt. I dilute the minerals I give them by cutting in about 40% stock salt granules.