The amount of waste milk on hand tends to vary throughout the year. Variability can be due to a number of factors including seasonal calving and disease patterns. However, the tendency should be toward a shortage of waste milk. Even when we combine transition milk from fresh cows with that of cows treated for mastitis, we still end up short.
Figure 1 presents a waste milk profile for each 100 milking cows in the herd. For every 100 milking cows, we will have about 50 heifer calves per year. This averages out to about 8 calves on milk at any one time. If these 8 calves are fed one gallon (8.6 lb) of waste milk daily for 8 weeks, they will consume 482 lb of waste milk each week.
There will also be about 2 fresh cows per week for every 100 milking cows. If we collect their transition milk on the 2nd and 3rd day after calving we have about 160 lb per week. We will also average 2 clinical mastitis cases each month. This is about ½ mastitis cow per week, and will give us about 140 lb of treated milk each week. Combining both sources of discarded milk gives us about 300 lb of waste milk each week. This is about 60% of the waste milk we need and leaves us short by 182 lb each week. Making up for this shortage while maintaining a consistent level of nutrients is an inherent challenge when feeding waste milk.
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