A mid-January heatwave last year spurred Hayley Hoogendyk to pull afternoon milking from 2pm to 11.30am as part of her twice-a-day milking schedule (her morning milking time was 5am). The one-week trial was extended to the end of the season.
Hoogendyk went back to the old twice-a-day pattern at the start of the new season, when heat-stress issues were no longer an issue.
"In the first few days of the heatwave, we were crashing from 1.8 to 1.6 kilograms of milksolids per cow per day but, after we pulled the afternoon milking time back to 11.30am, it went back up to 1.8," says Hoogendyk. "We didn't see any negative effects on the quality of the milk, and there was no change in the somatic cell count, so we're happy."
Happy cows and peopleDuring the trial, the cows ate a small amount of grass (or crops like turnips) between the two milkings, plus a similar amount of PKE during the second milking. They ate the remainder (80 per cent) of their daily grass or crop allocation while in their night paddock.
Hoogendyk now aims to keep the cows' day feed quite tight during summer. "We found that the less digesting of food they do during hot days, the better, as digestion raises their body temperature."
