TIME CHANGES
This past weekend was the shift to Daylight Savings Time…such an enjoyable shift in the fall gaining an extra hour of sleep. However on dairy farms it isn’t a simple “sleep an extra hour” decision when milking cows are used to a set milking interval. Here at Miner Institute, where we are on a 3x schedule, we just make the shift to the new time at our first milking shift. Farms on 2x schedules have a little more udder stress to deal with. On my home farm, we usually milked the first shift on the old time and shifted to the new time on the second milking shift because we didn’t exactly adhere to a 12 hour interval and could accommodate the time change more easily in the afternoon.
This year was a different experience. As my husband was getting ready to get up at the old time, we both realized that this was the first time change we were experiencing since transitioning to the robot milking system. Hmmm. Our cows were now on their own milking schedule. They didn’t care about Daylight Savings Time. They were going to be milked when they wanted to be milked.
With all the research we have conducted at Miner Institute focusing on cow time budgets and how important it is to minimize the impact of management practices on them, I have enjoyed watching our herd set their own individual time budgets since the move to our automated milking system. We’ve been told by our nutritionist and milking system dealer that our herd transitioned remarkably well. Our production response has exceeded our expectations. While as a proud mother, I want to give my son a lot of credit for the smooth transition, I also recognize that we were putting constraints on our herd’s time budgets and not allowing them to fully express their genetic potential in our old circa 1970s milking system. My husband and his brother updated the system as much as it could be and made improvements within the constraints of the infrastructure, but we had maxed out our options and it was impacting the cows. Now, no need to push groups through a holding area and driving them back to their pen after milking. They decide when to get milked although there are a few who need to be reminded…every single milking. Otherwise, the day is theirs to adhere to their time budget of lying, eating, ruminating, drinking, grooming, or just hanging out with a herdmate.
So, I convinced my husband to take the extra hour of sleep. The cows could wait a little longer to be fed.
— Katie Ballard
