Once a day milking.

[jdcarnathan]

Oh great Dexterians, I have yet another question. The heifer that I was talking about in a previous post of "not the mama", has turned out to be a great family milk cow. I have a few questions, we are hand milking twice a day right now, fairly consistent time intervals, (not perfect due to my work schedule though). She was making about a 1/2 gallons per milking for the first month or so. Now she has started to taper off to about 3/4 a day. I would figure she would be hitting a better peak at almost the 2 month mark. She has nursed a couple of the new calfs, not consistently at all, but a few times I have seen/felt this occur. I am considering taking her to once a day milking of a morning. I believe due to the fact she is a first freshener, it will get better in later years, but I am content with 1/2-3/4 gallons a day if I can only milk of a morning. Any thoughts on this, and suggestions on how to transistion?

Sailor

[dexterfarm]

it will not hurt her at all to milk once a day. However if you do that with no calf on her she will most likely quickly slow her milk production down and taper off to very little milk. Yes she will continue to increase in milk every year. I have one that I have milked consistently this is her forth lactation and every lactation has increased some.