Once-a-day milking (OAD) can be used long-term as the overall farming system, or it can be used tactically as a short-term response to adverse conditions.
OAD milking is the practice of milking cows once during a 24-hour period and is quite a common practice in parts of New Zealand.
OAD has grown in popularity in the last number of years in Ireland, as it reduces the labour requirements for farmers, which in turn, reduces pressure on staff.
It is regularly used before drying-off cows, as milking the cows just OAD can help the cows to build up a bit of condition before drying off.
Likewise, at the start of the calving season when there are only a small number of cows calved, farmers quite often milk the cows once during the day, just to relieve them of their colostrum and to feed calves.
Once-a-day milking
The advantages of OAD milking will depend on your farm system or layout and are as follows:
- Less time spent milking cows;
- Reducing staff pressure;
- Improve stock health (lame cows, poor condition cows, heifers, milk-fever prone cows);
- Improve reproduction (non-cyclers, heifers).
In the scenario where you have a small parlour for your herd size and spend hours milking in the parlour, OAD might be an option to save time and labour.
If your farm layout is not ideal for milking cows and requires them walking long distances to the shed, OAD might be more beneficial for the cows’ health and production.
When milking OAD, you can choose any time of the day to milk, but the timing can have a big impact on cows and people, particularly during the hot summer months.
The key message is that there are a range of options possible, allowing you to choose milking times that best suit your team.
If you are in the process of deciding whether to go OAD milking for the long run on your farm, just know that it requires a lot of planning, as it involves a change to the whole farm system.
The reality is, that it is going to be a massive change in routine for the cows and it will take them a great deal of time to get used to the milking intervals, which may see a drop in performance initially.
Considerations
From a few recent Teagasc studies, OAD milking has shown to have a drop in milk production and gives rise to your herds somatic cell count (SCC), while it has no effect on your herds fertility after the first year.
In general, the health and reproductive performance of your cows slightly improves, as they are not under as much pressure and can hold their condition a lot easier.
OAD milking should be considered for some farm systems and you should ask yourself a few questions before you think any further into it.
The questions you should ask yourself are as follows:
- Are you looking for a better work/life balance or find milking physically challenging?;
- Do you find it difficult to attract/retain suitable staff?;
- Are you meeting industry targets for reproductive performance?;
- How would you use the time you save by OAD milking?;
- Would OAD milking avoid capital expenditure to expand the dairy infrastructure?;
- Can you afford for your bulk milk SCC to increase by 20,000 – 40,000celss/ml?;
- Can your business sustain at least one season of reduced milk soilds/cow?
The genetic make-up of your herd will have to be considered, as a real high producing Holstein Friesian cow would probably not suit OAD milking.
Ideally, you would want to be selecting bulls with the highest yield of solids, while producing the minimum volume of milk and avoid bulls most prone to high SCC.