Jonathan Williams is milking a herd of Montbeliarde cows in Barnadown, Co. Wexford where a two-robot system is proving worth while for himself and his family.

Williams’ farm was the focus of the day at the Montbeliarde and Lely open day which took place on Thursday, September 26, in which attendees were impressed with the breed, their production and the overall farm system.

The farm was purchased by Williams’ grandfather in the 1940s, which was then inherited by his mother who farmed alongside her husband until Jonathan took over the reins.

Williams was a British Friesian herd for years until he went on college placement to John Hanbidge’s farm in Co. Wicklow, when he was introduced to his brother Alan, who was milking Montbeliarde cows.

The Montbeliardes piqued Williams’ interest straight away and he hasn’t looked back since, as he decided to purchase six maiden heifers from a farm in Co. Kildare.

These purchases proved to be the backbone of Williams’ pedigree herd, as he only has two black and white cows left out of 125 cows milking.

Williams told attendees that he has “been impressed since day one, the breed gives you longevity, milk volume, milk solids and a great calf that is worth breeding for replacements and or beef value”.

Montbeliarde

Williams moved from calving all year-round to a compact spring calving system around 20 years ago, in which he feels the Montbeliardes suit the system.

In a 15-unit parlour, Williams used to be milking for four and a half hours a day, in which they decided to look at upgrading to a 24-unit and couldn’t decide where to put it to suit the yard.

Williams told attendees that “it was only when someone said about considering robots, we thought it was the way to go as the yard was so central to all the paddocks around”.

Williams’ cows have been milking through two Lely Astronaut A5 robots since June 2019, in which he said that “everything has been running smoothly since putting them in”.

“I find I’ve more time to manage herd health, if there is a cow in heat, she’s waiting in the pen ready to be served and my cell count has never went over 100,000 cell/ml all year,” Williams added.

Williams put his great herd health and fertility down to the machine and the cow, as he finds the Montbeliardes have exceptional health with great feet and said that they are easily put back in calf.

The cow’s are artificially inseminated (AI’d) half to Montbeliarde and half to Belgian Blue with breeding starting the last week of April for nine and a half weeks in which the first five weeks are all Montbeliarde bulls used.

Heifers are served once with Montbeliarde semen and an Angus bull is then introduced to mop up any repeats.

Williams uses a a team of about five bulls in which he uses Coopex semen and his breeding advisor matches up the bulls with appropriate cows, with a keen focus on improving fat and protein and continuing the strong fertility in the herd.

Out of the 32 heifers that were served, only one was scanned to be empty and out of the cows, 119 cows were served in 9.5 weeks, with nine empty on the scan.

Williams’ spring-born Montbeliarde heifers

The fertility of Williams’ herd is excellent, as 94% of the herd had calved in four weeks in 2023, with a huge emphasis on getting cows out early so they can reach their peak on grass.

Production

At the moment, there are 125 cows milking through the robots, averaging 20.5kg of milk/cow/day, with fat sitting at 3.96% and protein at 3.58%.

The cows are currently being fed 5.75kg of meal/day as grass has been tight over the last number of weeks – feeding on a feed to yield system, ranging from 4kg – 7kg.

The cows are predicted to do 6,696kg in 305 days, and the milk solids as of September 24, 2024 was 370kg milk solids (MS)/cow.

In 2023, the cows produced 476kg/ms/cow with the average litres/day at 17.34L fat and protein were at 3.94% and 3.38%, in which Williams was disappointed with but felt that the litres produced still made up the solids.

In terms of grass, Williams is running an ABC grazing system in which blocks A and B are roughly the same size, with block C always being smaller, consisting of 20% of the total milking platform.

Existing farm roadways are used for the ABC grazing and paddocks were also left the same size, as they were when milking through the parlour.

Dual roadways are used to increase the flexibility if grass needs to be taken from one block and added to another.

The milking platform is 33.8ha, meaning he is heavily stocked on the milking platform at 3.7 cows/ha but manages well as he fed about 1.6t of meal last year and isn’t afraid to go in with silage.

Williams’ grazing management is very good and he tends to strip graze paddocks in order to achieve better residuals as he grows 11t of grass dry matter (DM)/ha across the whole land area, not just the milking platform.

Montbeliarde

Production

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Watch: Montbeliarde cows earning their keep milking on two robots