11,000 LITERS OF MILK PER DAY WITH 290 LACTATING COWS - SANTA ELMIRA FARM, BRAZIL 🇧🇷

Today we have 290 lactating cows. Currently we have an average production of 40 liters per cow per day which is the general average delivering approximately 11,500 liters. Today we are still working with two milking sessions so this average of 40 liters is based on two milkings. This corresponds to almost five liters of milk per kilogram of concentrate. This production ensures an average daily gain of 1,200 grams per day. Welcome everyone to our channel. Today we are here with Jasmine and Ranieri at Santa Elmira Farm. We're going to show you their management practices. They are currently transitioning. Their free stall is almost ready so they are moving the cows from the compost barn to the free stall. We will likely record another video once it is fully completed. Jasmine showed us their management practices. We visited the milking parlor, talked about nutrition and discussed the calves. I hope you enjoy this video. Subscribe to our channel, give us a like and enjoy the video. My name is Jasmine and I am a veterinarian here at Santa Elmira Farm. I started working here in July 2022 so it has been almost two and a half years. When we started the farm had 240 lactating cows and today we have 290 lactating cows. Currently we have an average production of 40 liters per cow per day as a general average delivering approximately 11,500 liters per day. The average milk quality has been around 3.7 percent fat and 3.3 percent protein. The somatic cell count, SCC, is around 250,000 and the total bacterial count, TBC, is approximately 4,000 to 5,000 per month. Today we are still working with two milking sessions so this average of 40 liters is based on two milkings. We have eight employees. One responsible for feeding, one who handles feeding during milking, bedding maintenance and cleaning the alley. Three women work in the milking parlor. One woman takes care of the calves and two employees handle general services and assist me with animal management. So in a way it's a lean and optimized team focused on milk production per employee. The management is streamlined for two milkings but next year the farm faces a new challenge with the new facilities. We plan to start the third milking session to further improve production and in the future we plan to move these cows to a free stall which is currently under construction in the background. It will feature sand bedding. Once we move the cows to the free stall and allow for their adaptation period we intend to implement the third milking session. This is the milking parlor at It is a 20 stall system from GEAR. Typically the employees work in sections dividing the milking parlor into three parts and each person handles the entire milking routine for their assigned cows. The process starts with pre-dipping followed by stripping the first three streams of milk, performing another pre-dipping, drying the teats and then attaching the milking unit. Currently the milking process also monitors the cow's milk production. We use these tags which are electronic buttons provided by the state's traceability system. We are not yet using monitoring collars. My monitoring system relies on the milk production data that the machine transmits to GEAR's computer software. This allows me to access daily milk production information for all the animals. These are the facilities we currently have for the animals. Here is the barn for the calves and we have also improvised a pre-partum area for heifers. Over there is the barn for cows in groups one and two which include high producing primiparous and multiparous cows. We also have a pre-partum area for the cows. The compost barn management here is very simple and streamlined. It is done twice a day where the bedding is turned twice daily using a rotary harrow. The feed alley is also cleaned twice a day during both milkings. The water troughs are cleaned regularly as well. Feeding is provided in two sessions per day, once in the morning during the first milking and again in the afternoon. We always aim to have fresh feed available when the cows return from milking. One challenge we currently face on the farm is stocking density. With the herd's growth we have become limited in space resulting in overstocking in the compost barn. We have noticed that the feed bunk space is not as ideal as we would like and the bedding area is also facing challenges. However, with the drier weather now that summer is approaching, conditions have been a bit more manageable compared to the winter. The diet is very simple. We try to minimize labor costs as much as possible. We are also working to reduce the need for ingredients that are not produced on the farm. We mainly use corn silage, cotton seed, a mix prepared by a local cooperative and a blend of bypass soybean meal and canola meal. These are just a few ingredients. Recently we added a bit of winter silage to reduce the reliance on corn silage, which has been a bit tight. The farm has grown significantly. Initially we calculated corn silage consumption based on the number of animals we had at the time. As the expanded production increased as well, the demand for silage also grew, forcing us to supplement with some winter silage to help reduce corn silage consumption. The diet is very straightforward and streamlined. There's not much complexity to it. Currently we are working with approximately 28% starch, crude protein at 17% for the primiparous group and 18% for the multiparous group. We do not have a post-fresh group. Today we work with three groups. One group of primiparous cows, one group of multiparous cows and a low production group. After calving, they are assigned directly to either the primiparous or multiparous group. We do not have a post-fresh group. They go directly into these groups. We try to keep them in their respective groups until they reach at least 200 days in milk. After that, we reallocate them based on space availability, milk protein levels, pregnancy status and DIM. In the future, with the freestall, we will have to reorganize into four groups. I will need to distribute the cows more evenly across the groups. As for their feed, the total mixed ration is mainly composed of corn silage with a small amount of oat silage. It also includes a protein concentrate that comes pre-mixed with all additives such as buffers, mineral salts, adsorbents, cottonseed and extruded soybean meal with canola. Basically, it's a very simple diet. The farm's goal is to produce high-quality forage, specifically high-quality corn silage. We aim to achieve the right chop length and good dry matter content to reduce the need for concentrates and optimize milk production per unit of concentrate fed. By producing high-quality forage on the farm, especially corn silage with a high starch content, we can achieve good feed conversion efficiency in these animals. The group of multi-paris cows, for example, is currently averaging 50 liters. These animals consume around 11 kilograms of concentrate per day. This results in nearly 5 liters of milk per kilogram of concentrate, which is an excellent feed conversion rate. This is what we strive for on the farm. Productive animals that generate profitability for the operation. We have staff working along the feed bunk, managing ventilation, and also in the holding area. We prioritize having more staff in the holding area than at the feed bunk because the cows still walk to the milking parlor. We focus on ensuring they cool down before milking, but we also