Loskop Farm - South Africa
Farm name: Loskop Farm
Number of head: 1,200 stock on farm, milking 600
Details
Owners: Stuart Mackenzie
Breed of cows: Holstein and Ayrshire
Annual milk production averages:
On an annual basis 23 liters per cow on the Holsteins and about 19 liters per cow on the Ayrshires.
Quote
"I would recommend it to every single dairy farmer. It's gonna make a good manager better."
Herd management
I know that whether I'm in or out of the office, cows are being fed properly, they're being sorted properly, they're being managed properly and I've got a much better feel on my business at the end of the day.
I think that it would be imprudent to think that a system of any sort will run your business for you. You have to have the interaction with the system in order to make it work, at the end of the day.
And so, to feel, to think that you are able to leave your business alone or spend more time away from it purely because you have the system in place, of any sorts, is, I think, short-sighted.
"Afimilk" has been the ground-breaking innovator and leader in dairy farming for the past thirty years. We had a vision then. We are the vision now.
Customer Service
The biggest difference that we've noticed is the cow condition, has been really, really easy to maintain because of the in parlor feeding system and also due to the various monitoring measures that we have in place, we can pick up cow health a lot easier.
I don't spend unnecessary time in the office doing unnecessary admin. I can come in, I can do what I need to do, and if I really need to do on a once a week basis, I do a real thorough check. Then I'll sit down and I'll crank it out for two hour. But if I need to be in here for two minutes and make a decision whether a cow needs to be inseminated or not, then I can do that as well.
I would say that my return on investment, it's very difficult to quantify because I don't believe that the system has been in play long for enough for me to actually see the net results of the fertility issues, conditioning issues. so it's a hard question to answer. But are there benefits in cash flow terms? 100% - I mean am I making more money than I did? Definitely. Is it costing me any money? 100% not - So, whether, the thing that I said to myself in buying the system was not how can I afford this system? I said how can I afford not to have it at the end of the day? Because really, it's something of my farming style, I've built around it and now it's an integral part of making my business work, So, I can't do without it.
I bought it for two reasons at the end of the day. The main reasons at the end of the day were the feeding and the heat detection.
I feel that we're getting maximum value out of that right now. The next issue for me to get in the next year, I need to get the health aspects going. I haven't paid enough attention to that, so I'd like to start looking at that closer. And then, I would also like to, the proposed "Afilab" that is going to be made available to us, so I would like to see how that could fit into my business and then start making more changes to efficiencies, by feeding, to fat corrected milk and also, hopefully, enhancing my milk price, I'll be able to sell a cleaner and better product at the end of the day.
But really, "Afimilk" is meeting so many of my expectations, at the moment, that, I think that, you know, it's allowed me to go and spend time on the rest of my farm where I need to be spending time growing food for the cows. And as long as I'm in touch with what the system is doing, then it's controlling me as much as I'm controlling it.
