With the August bank holiday just past, the duty of milking on a lazy Sunday evening may not have been too welcome to some.

With cows now easing in yield, there is an option for farmers to revert to a 13-times-a-week rota regarding milking.

Milking 13 times in the week requires some tweaking to the milking schedule. It isn’t necessarily ‘skipping’ a milking.

If Sunday evening is the designated evening to be skipped, preparation starts on Saturday. Saturday’s evening milking is left until late. Sunday morning’s milking is then pushed out in to late morning/midday.

Routine

The farmers can then take the Sunday evening to themselves. Cows are left unmilked from around 11am Sunday morning until early Monday morning.

Monday morning’s milking will be earlier than normal, due to cows not having been milked since late Sunday morning.

With cows now off peak, milk yields should not be affected with the flexible milking time.

The allocation of grass should coincide with the longer residency period inside paddocks to ensure that cows are not left hungry due to the flexible milking time.

Pioneers

New Zealand have been the pioneers of flexible milking times, with just 45% of farmers operating a twice-a-day milking routine all year.

A common alternate routine is a three-in-two milking, which is similar to the 13-times a week.

Cows are milked at 12- 18- and 18-hour intervals, for example 5am morning, 5pm evening and again at 11am the following morning.

Where good-quality relief milkers are available, it may be best to use these should you wish to take a break away from the farm on Sundays.

Regular milking not only helps relief milkers become familiar with the herd, paddocks, parlour routine, etc, but it also gives them a regular stream of work and some loyalty towards a farmer who uses them on a regular scheduled basis.