Have a look at our cows! Beautiful aren´t they? But it hasn´t been easy... Listing of cows by number order (April-2008):
Our main activity is milk production. Everything we do is related to this purpose. Everything we produce is mainly for feeding our dairy cattle. The most important harvests of the year are :
We also grow potatoes for our partners and some maize to feed our own calves. We organize the tasks so that during the harvest the two women are in charge of the milking parlor and all the men go to the fields with the machinery. The silage of grass and of corn takes us one week each and hay about fifteen days. As our sixty hectares of land are not enough for all our purposes, we have recently rented forty hectares more. In order to be able to manage our property we use the maps from SIXPAC (or from the Catastro) available on the Internet (see fields). During the silage we often use the machinary available in ICOS. Fertilizing is also essential. A well-planned, reasonable fertility program is a basic part of proper maintenance. It is applied in the campaigns of October and February. We use our own livestock manure as a fertilizer combined with the mineral fertilizers we get from ICOS. Cattle feeding and nutrition. We must be able to give a balanced feeding to our dairy cattle. We do it under the advice of a nutriologist that provides us with a well-balanced formula after analyzing the silage. She decides the exact amounts of silage, corn and fodder. We usually get the fodder at ICOS, a cooperative of which we are part. She uses different formulas for milk cows, dry cows and calves. We began with a fodder mixer cart and now we use a CUMA And our new mixer dispenses a ticket like this every time it dispenses a ration!!
Management. Milk cows are kept apart in the cowshed next to the milking parlor. Dry cows and calves are in a different section. Milk cows never leave the cowshed. Dry cows usualy spend a month or a month and a half outside the cowshed and remain in the pastures day and night with a food suplement (usually hay). Calves leave the cowshed at dawn and come back at dusk, when we give them their food supplement. Vets. The technique of inseminating a cow requires adequate knowledge, experience and patience. We always follow the instructions of our semen suppliers because obviously the collection of semen from a bull is a specialized skill and should be attempted only by those with the proper equipment, training and experience. (See tests of year 2006) There´s a professional vet service at Lycos for potentially dangerous situations. They control the sanitation conditions of cattle once a year and ear-tab our cows once a week. Births. All the newly born female calves are bred and kept to maintain our herd stabilized because dairy cows have a very short life (ten years, aprox). Males are usually sold except the two or three we keep for self consumption. Milking. Proper milking procedures and a clean environment are required to minimize mastitis and maximize the production of quality milk from a herd. Milking should be done by people who are responsible, trained, and conscientious. We milk our cows twice a day, at 6 a.m and at 6.30 p.m. Two people are required to do this task while a third person cleans the milking parlor and feeds the newly born. Our milk is collected from the farm every 24 hours and it is commercializedt hrough ICOS. Milk control. The quality of our milk is controlled once a month by dary employees from Africor. Somatic cell count, salification, contents of antibodies, number of litres per cow and other precise and useful results are available to breeders on the Internet (CONTROL LEITEIRO) in three or four days after recording. It is private information and an access code number is required. Recording results and all the information obtained is very useful for us and other breeders. Mammitis and other affections can be treated at a very early stage. |
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Between 1978 and 2006 we have improved both in technology and in quality of life.