What are the average milk production figures looking like on farm in the second half of the year as breeding wraps up?

The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) can indicate where average milk production is sitting through its national milk recording statistics.

According to ICBF, 126,396 cows from 1,108 individual herds were milk recorded between Tuesday, June 23 and Friday, July 3.

That brings the total number of cows milk recorded for the year to date up to 1,078,776 from 8,748 herds.

The data from these recent recordings shows a clear drop in solids over the last 10 days.

Milk production

The average milk yield of recording herds was sitting at 24.14kg/milk/cow at 3.94% fat and 3.48% protein.

This equates to an average of 1.79kg/milk solids/cow/day at the moment.

Considering milk production was sitting at 1.9kg/milk solids/cow/day in the week leading up to June 19, and had peaked at 2.15kg/milk solids/cow/day back in late March, the gradual downfall is evident.

The quality and abundance of grass on farms should be letting herds push on with solids for another while, boosting milk cheques as much as possible for as long as possible.

The average somatic cell count (SCC) for the herds recording in the past 10 days sits at 162,000 cells/ml.

This figure has being relatively steady over the past six weeks; however, it is some distance from the target of sub-100,000 cells/ml.

The best 20% of cows recorded had an average cell count of 96,000 cells/ml, while the worst 20% had an average of 260,000 cell/ml.

An SCC reading that high means mastitis is in the herd and needs to be dealt with immediately.

If the issue is persistent, farmers need to review their milk recording data to identify problem cows and compile a cull cow strategy.

Parlour hygiene and teat spraying needs to be maintained to ensure the milk cheque is not leaking in the form of mastitis.