I was milking out Cream last night, my star milker, and she gave 6lbs 6oz of milk (11lbs 7oz for the day). I was a little shocked, this year she's normally in the low 5lbs/high 4lbs per milking, especially given that she's 6 years old and 220+ days into this lactation. I've been expecting her to curve downward, and she had been doing that slowly up till about 3 weeks ago. Last years barn records showed a peak at 14lbs/day at 100 days in, and a gradual decrease from then on.
About 4 weeks ago I changed her hay to a much better quality hay, 3rd cutting, nice hay. I assumed the good hay had caused her milk production to jump up a bit and left it at that. But with the increase of last night I got wondering.
My duck pen is beside the goat pen. Both are good size, about 15x30 pens. and they are separated by a 2x4 wire fence, and internal barn beams, etc. But it's not solid, so light from the duck pen can leak into the goat pen. Since these are young ducks just coming into lay I've been increasing the daylight over the past 6 weeks up to 17 hours per day. It's not much light, just a 40w bulb in a shade directed down at the ducks. But, there some indirect light that comes into the goat pen.
My biggest concern is this is going to throw the heat cycles off in Cream, which I'm going to want to breed in December. I've been looking and I haven't seen any signs of a strong heat this month. Any ideas if this might be cause problems?
About 4 weeks ago I changed her hay to a much better quality hay, 3rd cutting, nice hay. I assumed the good hay had caused her milk production to jump up a bit and left it at that. But with the increase of last night I got wondering.
My duck pen is beside the goat pen. Both are good size, about 15x30 pens. and they are separated by a 2x4 wire fence, and internal barn beams, etc. But it's not solid, so light from the duck pen can leak into the goat pen. Since these are young ducks just coming into lay I've been increasing the daylight over the past 6 weeks up to 17 hours per day. It's not much light, just a 40w bulb in a shade directed down at the ducks. But, there some indirect light that comes into the goat pen.
My biggest concern is this is going to throw the heat cycles off in Cream, which I'm going to want to breed in December. I've been looking and I haven't seen any signs of a strong heat this month. Any ideas if this might be cause problems?