In the coming weeks, dairy farmers will enter into a peak-pressure period – which will only intensify with a move towards a 90% six-week calving rate. In the weeks post calving, some dairy farmers milk once-a-day (OAD) to reduce the workload, but return to twice-a-day (TAD).

A huge crowd travelled to the Horse and Jockey in Co. Tipperary recently to find out if OAD milking could be a potential solution to ease some of the pressures associated with modern-day, spring-calving, dairy systems.

Farmers – a mixture of established dairy farmers and potential converts from beef farming – attended the event to hear about the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of OAD milking.

However, a question that seemed to be on a lot of farmers’ minds was: ‘Which breed of cow best suits the OAD system?’

Which cow?

Teagasc’s Brian Hilliard, the organiser of the OAD milking event, has undertaken extensive work in this area over the years and addressed the question.

“From research in New Zealand where OAD was practiced for many years, they would favour the pure Jersey cow. The next best breed to that they say is the Jersey-cross cow.

“They have higher solids – fat and protein. Because there is less volume, there is less stress on the udder.

“Having said that, there are a number of farmers in the country who are milking Holstein Friesian cows and they are doing a very good job. And, there is a lot of farmers considering going OAD, but they don’t wish to go crossing with Jerseys.

“All I would say to those people is, there are ‘black and white’ herds which are achieving up to 3.80% protein on average and some of the very best black and white herds I’ve seen are doing very high kilograms of milk solids.”

Touching on bull selection, Brian said: “I would think with a very good selection of bulls, you can stay with black and white cows if that suits you. However, try and keep to a medium-sized cow; don’t go for the very big 650-700kg cow.

I think they are less efficient and a lot of farmers milking OAD are walking cows long distances and they are not suited to those systems compared to a Jersey-cross cow or a medium-sized black and white cow.

Teagasc’s George Ramsbottom also touched on the topic.

“We also need to look at health and selecting low somatic cell count cows (SCC) and cows with mastitis resistance; we also need to look at udder conformation.

“As a rule of thumb, in Holstein herds – on average – the reduction is 30% in volume and 25% in composition and in Jerseys it’s 25% in volume and 20% in milk solids yield. But, there is huge variability between cows in either breed, with cross breeds somewhere intermediate,” he explained.