Keep the entry and exit gates clean.

Although the VMS has a floor cleaner, it is wise to spray off the corners a few times a day, on the places where the floor cleaner does not keep clean enough.

While you’re doing that, you might as well clean the lower bars of the entrance and exit gates too. Manure crusts builds easily here. That does not look neat, but above all: if you decide, on a rainy day, to give the VMS and space a good cleaning, everything will shine for you again, but also for the cow!

If the difference is too great with compared to before cleaning, many cows will hesitate to quickly enter the VMS again.

By keeping more parts of the VMS clean on a daily basis, after a thorough cleaning the difference will not be so great and will thereby decrease changes in visiting behavior!

Stress from heat and breath control

Checking the rumination is known to most livestock farmers, but do you also check “Breath control”?

Under normal conditions, at rest and lack of high temperatures, the cow breathes about 40 times per minute. This can be counted on the left side of the cow.

When a cow is too hot, making it difficult to lose its heat, or is bothered for other reasons, breaths count per minute can increase.

At over 60 breaths a minute it is no longer fun for the cow, then she stays up longer since standing up causes more heat loss than lying down. She could also hang above the water trough. Above 80 breaths per minute she is experiencing serious heat stress.

Remember that a cow’s “pleasant outside temperature” is about 8 degrees lower than ours. In addition to that, a cow that gives a lot of milk is hard at work. So, she can get warm quickly!

And warm weather, especially in combination with higher humidity, can also result in 5 – 12% less (rough) feed intake. And she can suffer from that for longer than the heat lasts.

That is why having a cool place for the cow in the summer, is vital. For both longer production and showing heats; and therefore, for fertility!

By counting the breaths every now and then, preferably from high-yielders, you will see earlier whether the ventilation or cooling are sufficient and whether there is sufficient fresh air in the house!

Increasing concentrated feed after calving – 2.

Using DelPro 5.2 or higher, feed tables on DIL (Days In Lactation) can also be used.
This is very useful for increasing concentrate at the right pace after calving.

During company visits, we sometimes come across situations in which the concentrate build up goes from day 1 to 25 days in one stretch. This process can go much smoother, using more steps, as there are as many as 12 steps possible. Especially with heifers, it is very sensible to build up calmly in the first week and then a little faster.
With rations of 2/3 maize as roughage, you should start more slowly than when using a ration with only grass silage / hay. It is also better to build up slowly if the feed fence offers a higher basic ration with multiple by-products. In this case use more steps, for example, divide the first 25 days into 5 steps of 5 days.

And as with many settings: A good concentrate feed table is good for the “normal” cows. If a cow has had a heavy calving, or for other reasons has had too little roughage intake during the first week, it is also better to start with concentrate for this cow more carefully. If the cow is very active, in generous condition and has a quickly increasing milk production: then this cow may be able to start up a little faster!

Take also a look at Tip of the Month July 2013:

https://www.harrytuinier.nl/en/2013/12/31/tips-uit-2013/

Tips on your phone & How to remotely view DelPro together

It is useful to create a shortcut on your phone, “app”, which will take you straight to the Tip of the Month.

Do this by looking up the Tip of the Month on the phone via Google, for example via
https://www.harrytuinier.nl/en/category/tip-van-de-maand/

With Android, you will see 3 dots at the top right, if you press on this, various options will appear, including “Add to home screen”. If you press this you can add this page, if desired with logo.

With iOS (Apple), you also look up the Tip of the Month page. Click on the square icon with the arrow pointing upwards at the bottom, then click on “Add to Home screen”. It will now be added as an “app” on your home screen.

Of course, older Tips can be found there or under the menu button.

From the front page:

Now that the Corona virus is keeping all of us at home, advising has also virtually stopped.
Many livestock farmers, rightly, prefer not to have too many people around the house.

Fortunately, nowadays,  we can remotely catch up with a telephone and laptop, as if we are sitting around the table, discuss settings and answer questions!

LogMeIn and also TeamViewer offer excellent options for this.

If you would like to go over the information from your computer together, please contact us / your Advisor and we will make an appointment.

Fresh air!

Stagnant water, such as that in ponds and ditches, is known to allow dirt, bacteria and germs to survive and spread easily. That is usually easy to see. They often become “stink ditches”.

Drinking troughs could have the same effect. Therefore, watertroughs has to easily be able to flushed easily and / or be refreshed regularly.

However, also not moving air is bad.  Since you can’t see that and we get used to the smell of the stall, it doesn’t stand out. See the Tip about ventilation from August 2011.
Especially the highly producing or unfit cows have issues with effects deriving from still air.
Cows that have to produce a lot of milk also need a lot of oxygen.

Always make sure the air in the stall is moving!
Fresh air is a pleasure for the cows as for people, also in the robot room or milking parlor.

Set the fans at the lowest setting and open the windbreak curtains on (one?) side earlier and more often. Consider that even in the winter when it is not even warm, saturated air should be replaced by fresh air!