Category Archives: Feeding

Feeding Standards and Responsibilities

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These are the expectations and responsibilities of the primary feeder. Also refer to Feeding Procedure

  • Bunk Management
    • Milking cows should never be out of feed. This means that a small amount (~500lb total) of cow feed will be removed and fed to heifers most days.
    • Prefresh pen(s) should never be out of feed – approx 100 lb (from each pen) each day should be removed and given to the dry cow group
    • Heifers should not be out of feed for more than 2 hours
    • Use the full length of all feed bunks throughout the day so that cows have as much access as possible to feed.
    • All old feed should be cleaned up or removed before delivering new feed
    • Minimize the amount of bunk refusals being thrown out as junk – get the feeding amounts right so that they are nearly cleaning up all of their feed every day.
    • Refusals, and Basis need to be written down every day on the feed charts in order to feed accurately
  • Pile and Bag Management
    • No moldy silage fed to any groups – a minimal amount to heifers is acceptable after best effort is made to separate good feed out
    • Silage that has been raked down or otherwise disturbed from the pile needs to be fed that day. Don’t rake down more than is needed. Try to keep the amount saved for the next day within 5%.
    • Any raked down silage that is left over from the previous day must be fed ASAP. Consider blending it in to cow batches, or feeding it to heifers. Never leave any silage sitting for more than 24 hours.
    • Uncover piles 1 tire width at a time and fork off all spoiled feed at that time.  Consider uncovering less under conditions such as forcasted rain or bird pressure.
    • Piles should be uncovered the day before it is needed – this ensures that if a group runs out of feed early, you will have the silage you need to mix a batch right away. Feeding job is not done until piles are uncovered for the next day.
  • Clean up (every day):
    • All bags and piles kept clean and neat. 
    • All loose plastic on the burn pile. 
    • All loose tires stacked neatly.
    • All junk feed on the junk feed pile
  • Pre-weekend preparation
    • Piles should be uncovered enough to get through Sunday morning feeding
    • All pens that get hay should have enough to get through the weekend
  • Equipment Maintenance
    • Daily
      • Check oil and coolant in tractors
    • Weekly
      • Grease feed mixers
      • Check fluid levels in mixers
      • Grease skid loaders
      • Check fluid levels in skid loaders
    • As needed
      • Change oil in tractors
      • Change oil in skid loaders

Feed Table Change – Increase Feed by 1 lb

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In an attempt to get more traffic to the robots, we are going to increase the pellets by 1lb in the robot, and reduced the energy in the bunk accordingly.  We are also reducing the amount of challenge for some of the first lactation tables.  A lot of heifers were getting much more pellets than they needed.

Here are the new feed tables:

Feed Table - Normal Mar 2016 Feed Table - Challenge March 2016 Feed Table - Challenge-Lact1 - Mar 2016 Feed Table - LateLact-Lact1 - Mar 2016 Feed Table - MidLact-Lact1 - Mar 2016

Changes to Feeding Parameters

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We found that many of our cows were not getting as much feed as they should.  Drilling down, we found several reasons:

  • Our maximum amount of feed per visit was too low (3.5lb).  High producing cows were not getting all of their feed.  We increased this to 5.5lb.  This allows a cow to get as  much as 11lb on days that she only visits the robot 2X.  The only potential problem with this would be cows eating too much concentrate at a given time – we don’t think we are anywhere near this problem.
  • Calculating rations once every 7 days – this is not often enough.  Cows milk production changes too much in 7 days.  If that 7th day is a low one by chance, it leaves her without enough feed for the whole next week.  Delaval informed us that the reason to not calculate more often is because of errors in the Ration Calculation Log – cows that are in Step Up or Step Down mode will generate an error in the log.  This was causing too much confusion for farmers, so Delaval moved the calculation out to 7 days.  This gives enough time for the step up or down to complete before the next calculation.  My belief is that if I calculate every day, the changes will be small enough that I won’t have many cows stepping up more than 1 day.
  • Dispensing rate – this can be calculated by max dispense / stall time.  5.5lb / 8 min => 0.685 lb/min.  However we have to allow time for when the cow’s head is up, and time at the end after all but one cup are off.  We are going to try a 0.8 lb/min rate.
  • Feed table timing – many cows were going above the 10lb feeding rate before the feed table started at 21 days.  The table will not start at 14 days.

Much of this data was obtained by using an Excel tool that generated graphs like this:

924 Graph

HMC Silo Operation

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A few pointers when operating the High Moisture Corn Silo

  • All three components should be operated together:
    • Run the unloader whenever the conveyor is on – We want to keep the conveyor full so that when we are trying to get the right amount into a batch, it is running consistently.
    • Run the dutchman (the pole with chains inside the silo) whenever the unloader is running.  By doing this we don’t have a time when the unloader is running without bringing any feed out.  The feed that we have now works fine with the dutchman running constantly.
    • You will want to stop the unloader a second before stopping the conveyor
    • The dutchman can be stopped last – it is okay if it runs for a few seconds after stopping the unloader.
  • Scales remote reception – the scales remote gets best reception when the door of the breaker box is at a 90 degree position from the panel.
  • Always close the silo door on the bottom of the unloader.  The doors should not be left open for any length of time.  While it is okay to leave it loose between loads, it should never be open after feeding is completed for the day.

Started using VMS Feed Tables

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First implementation of feed tables in Delpro.

  • Two tables:  Normal, Challenge
  • Challenge table is setup to feed at a rate based on 10lb higher milk production
  • Challenge table has minimum of 8lb – don’t want fresh cows to ever have less than 8lb
  • Normal table has a minimum of 3lb – don’t want any cow to ever have less than 3lb to keep her coming to the robot and having enough to eat to keep her calm
  • Heifers are on challenge table from 21 DIM to 90 DIM and Normal table from 91 DIM on
  • Cows are on challenge table from 21 DIM to 70 DIM and Normal table from 71 DIM on
  • Both groups are started with 4lbs at calving, and increased to 10lb by 10DIM

Feed Table from Nate Keifer:

  • 50 – 2
  • 60 – 3.5
  • 70 – 5
  • 80 – 6.5
  • 90 – 7.5
  • 100 – 8.5
  • 110 – 9.5
  • 120 – 10.5
  • 130 – 11.5
  • 140 – 12.5
  • 150 – 13.5

Feed Table - Challenge Sept 2015 Feed Table - Normal Sept 2015