Many dairy farmers get hung up on the milking interval, as traditionally the 10 to 12 hour split used to be the only way of milking cows.
The farm structure in Ireland has seen a huge change over the last number of years, as the traditional owner-operator plus additional family help model is struggling, with many herds having increased.
The sustainability of dairy farming now relies on being able to hire workers on farms, but this can’t be done without providing employment opportunities where pay and conditions of work are at least as attractive as alternative careers.
Studies have shown that long working hours for farm employees can make the employment opportunities very unattractive.
Nearly every other industry provides a finish time of 5:00-6:00p.m, and what time employees finish their days work was cited as a critical issue for employees.
The biggest fear for farmers moving from the traditional milking interval to a 16:8 milking interval is the drop in milk production and performance but studies have shown that it is not the case.
Milking interval
A Teagasc study was done where milk recording data from 2,366 herds across 23 counties over a one-year period (2020) were analysed.
The study showed that across all herds, the mean evening milking finish time was 6:43p.m and the length of the working day was nearly 12 hours with huge variation seen throughout as the working day ranged from 8.5 hours to 16.4 hours.
The milking interval is defined as the time from when the first cluster goes on in the morning to the time the first cluster goes on again that evening.
In order to reduce the amount of hours worked a day, it has been shown that a 16:8 milking interval is feasible, which would see a farmers putting clusters on at 7:00a.m and again that evening at 3:00p.m.
The data collected on commercial herds for the study showed that there was no relationship between milking interval and daily milk yield, with no change seen in somatic cell count (SCC).
Although, a lot of the time it can be difficult early in the evenings, especially at busy times of the year when cows are calving down and calves have to be fed, so there should be some effort to reduce your working hours.
Even if it is difficult to implement a 16:8 milking interval during the busy spring time, farmers should see whether it is possible to introduce later on in the year to reduce the work load and make your farm a more attractive place to work.
If your milking interval is not going to affect your milk solid production, your cow performance and your SCC, then it is certainly a no brainer to try and finish up a bit earlier in the evenings.
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