Post by rayvd on Sept 12, 2021 9:43:20 GMT -5
Hello friends,
We have a small "farm" in the hills of Paraguay, South America, and we are presently doing some renovations, including the construction of a new cow shelter/milking parlor, and I wanted to ask here if anyone has experience they could share in relation to our desire. I find a lot of information about conventional dairy methods, but here in Paraguay, we do things a little differently, and we would like to preserve the traditional handling methods used by the local homesteads.
We have 5 cows and 1 service bull, plus up to 5 calves (presently 3, with a fourth coming soon, and when the oldest one is of age, we plan to sell her, since more cows presents too much strain on our limited human and pasture resources).
The main items of concern revolve around the bull and the calves. I don't really want to leave the bull in the field at night, when we bring in the milking cows, since it is quite possible that we may need to bring in all the cows and then he would be left alone, and this would lead to him getting aggressive. I would also like to have him regularly come in with the cows so that I can keep a closer eye on his condition for when he needs treatment. Is it okay to put him on a perforated rubber mat (approximately 1/2 inch) over the concrete each night? We will have a drainage system in place for the urine and wash water.
The cows would be on an Animattress I mat. We have no typical bedding options available in our circumstances, so I can only hope that the rubber mats will be sufficient... does anyone have experience with this? I guess the calves are not so heavy that it would be a problem for them, right? They usually have harder/less soiled ground to rest on at night than the adults.
Finally, we use the local traditional method of allowing the calves to suckle to stimulate the cows to let down their milk, rather than separating them and bottle-feeding. Does anyone have experience with this method and any design tips? We generally (machine) milk each cow twice per milking session, with the calf suckling before each time. My design question revolves around how to conveniently move the calf from the pen to the mother and back to the pen again to repeat the cycle... any tips here would be especially appreciated!
Thanks for your time!
Ray
We have a small "farm" in the hills of Paraguay, South America, and we are presently doing some renovations, including the construction of a new cow shelter/milking parlor, and I wanted to ask here if anyone has experience they could share in relation to our desire. I find a lot of information about conventional dairy methods, but here in Paraguay, we do things a little differently, and we would like to preserve the traditional handling methods used by the local homesteads.
We have 5 cows and 1 service bull, plus up to 5 calves (presently 3, with a fourth coming soon, and when the oldest one is of age, we plan to sell her, since more cows presents too much strain on our limited human and pasture resources).
The main items of concern revolve around the bull and the calves. I don't really want to leave the bull in the field at night, when we bring in the milking cows, since it is quite possible that we may need to bring in all the cows and then he would be left alone, and this would lead to him getting aggressive. I would also like to have him regularly come in with the cows so that I can keep a closer eye on his condition for when he needs treatment. Is it okay to put him on a perforated rubber mat (approximately 1/2 inch) over the concrete each night? We will have a drainage system in place for the urine and wash water.
The cows would be on an Animattress I mat. We have no typical bedding options available in our circumstances, so I can only hope that the rubber mats will be sufficient... does anyone have experience with this? I guess the calves are not so heavy that it would be a problem for them, right? They usually have harder/less soiled ground to rest on at night than the adults.
Finally, we use the local traditional method of allowing the calves to suckle to stimulate the cows to let down their milk, rather than separating them and bottle-feeding. Does anyone have experience with this method and any design tips? We generally (machine) milk each cow twice per milking session, with the calf suckling before each time. My design question revolves around how to conveniently move the calf from the pen to the mother and back to the pen again to repeat the cycle... any tips here would be especially appreciated!
Thanks for your time!
Ray