The Muster- James Burrows: Dairy NZ

James Burrows gives some reminders around milking dry off.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Yes, you had to be a bench shine. Welcome back
to the Master. James Barrows of Diary and z joins
us this afternoon. Good afternoon, James. How's everything.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, trucking along yet, like everybody winding down for the
for the end of the season. And May's come around
and journal come around pretty quick following on.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, now you're based in central Target. It sounds as
though the frosts they've started.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yep. No, definitely starting to feel the chill now. The
pretty orange leaves from autumn are very quickly disappearing and
it's been the last of the week ten days has
been yet pretty fresh in the morning.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
And when you get this time of year, status quada
supposing a drying since you're looking at drying off teat
ceilings going on and love and behold you're out of
the shed and into the panic with winter feeding.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, yeah, very much so. Yeah. We had the Tiree
discussion group yesterday and had a lot of good chat
around around wondering and drying off and really interesting. There's
still it was a bit of a mix in terms
of milking frequency. There's a few one today, a few

(01:21):
three and two, and a few still hanging on twice
twice a day, But really that trigger point for a
lot of people in the group was the cold snat
last weekend got a bit of rain and that was
enough to sort of turn people over to to once
a day, And the feedback was pretty good, like people
hadn't noticed a lot of a drop and motivation wise

(01:44):
to get you through to the end of the end
of the season. That yeah, people were saying once a
day was really helping them. Just I mean, it's been
a cracker season, no doubt about it. But just like anything,
you get to the end of the of anything and
you need that motivation to get through. And yeah, once
today was sort of helping a helping hand to get

(02:06):
through the end of May. And yeah, definitely cools down.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
So likes about eighteen hour milkings. When do people start
looking at this just when things start getting a bit slower.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
It varies, Yeah, so generally when grass starts to slow up,
or or it could be that you're trying to sort
of use it as a transition between twice a day
and once a day to slow things up before milking,
try and put a little bit of condition on that
last month before dry off. But also a lot of

(02:40):
people use it for staff and whatnot, so that it's
a bit more, I guess, a bit more of a
relaxed vibe. You can bite the bullet and just go
once a day. There's nothing wrong with that, and like
we do once a day at home and have no
qualms with it. Just personal preference, personal choice. But yeah,

(03:02):
we generally see it sort of start mid to late April,
early May. But yeah, all depends on the weather. Once
the weather starts starts to turn to rubbish, it definitely
comes a bit more prominent in people's minds.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Okay, we're drawing off, what's some things we need to remember.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
The main thing that we're wanting people to think about
is just making sure that we're not transitioning into dry
off rarely abruptly. It's always hard to do if gross
is still hanging on and the payout is relatively healthy
at the moment. There is that potential that people milk

(03:45):
on longer into late May early June and then shut
down too quickly until we're wanting is just a bit
of a plan in place. So whether it's drafting out
lighter condition to now drying off, lower producing or early
carving cows now and just getting it set up over

(04:05):
a sort of ten day two week period so that
you're not not going home in the last week and
decide the poll penn end of mates is two hundred
metals coming first week of Jones, so yeah, really just
having a plan in place, making sure you've had your
dry off consultant, consultation with your vet so you know

(04:26):
what's getting dry, what's getting teet seel, what the plan
is for there, and also just making sure everybody on
farm knows what's happening, because worst case scenario, you don't
want cows getting dried off one day and then got
back into the shed the next day because someone was
on days off and nobody kept them in the loop.
So yeah, just having a really good plan of attack

(04:48):
that last last bit of the season is critical for
setting up next season.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Really a lot of positives happening in the dairy sector
at the moment. James Barros, thanks once again.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
No no worries, thanks to your time.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
You had to be a big shut. James Burrows of
Derry and Zi where he's a year gone talking dry
off already. Wendy throws up next coach of the Southern
Steel who's talking nipple last night