The importance of milk recording is not lost on many dairy farms, but there are still a large number of farms where it is not regularly completed.
Although farms that are not completing a milk recording will have a reason for not doing so, the amount of data that is available from it cannot be argued with.
With regulations changing the way antibiotics are used on farms, a focus need to be placed on understanding and controlling cell counts in your herd.
It is also important to know and get a better understanding of how individual cows within your herd are preforming.
Cell counts
Getting cell counts under control can feel like a significant challenge, and the reality is that it likely will be for many farmers.
Once the problem cows have been identified, the challenge does become a lot easier, because you will then know exactly what to look out for.
Although many herds have yet to start calving, booking in an early milk recording – around 60 days after the first cow has calved – is an important step in understanding cell counts on your farm.
You can firstly determine if your dry cow treatments have worked on cows that had infections at the end of the last lactation.
This early recording also allows you to identify cows that have developed an infection over the dry period, and potentially treat them before a clinical case appears.
You must act on the information that you get from the milk recording. Cows that have had cell count issues during the last lactation and that remain high during this lactation need to be culled.
You need to protect the uninfected cows with the herd and prevent the spread of infection.
Milk recording
These early milk recordings are also useful for identifying the top preforming cows within the herd that can then be used to generated replacements.
The breeding programmes in many herds has moved to dairy or sexed dairy for the top cows in the herd, and then beef sires for the remaining cows.
Breeding excess dairy replacements is likely now a thing of the past for many, as the national dairy herd moves into a period of consolidation. The need for large amounts of dairy heifers is dropping.
You should be breeding replacements from only the best cows in the herd to obtain the quickest increases in genetic gain.
High dairy beef index (DBI) bulls that are well balanced for calving difficulty and carcass weight need to be used on the remaining herd – to ensure that a good quality dairy beef calf is being produced.