Some of the things we are taught as youth stick, unfortunately for my high school modern literature teacher, some things don’t. One of the things that stick with me is the thought that the average shot never hits the duck. Two feet in front and two feet behind on average hits the duck, but anyone who has ever fired a shot at anything will tell you, the hunted lives for another day in that instance.
On average, a dairy cow carries 20% of its milk in the cisternal portion of the udder at a point 12 hours from the last milking event. Why does that matter? It matters because the cisternal portion of the milk in the udder is more or less available to be harvested with little or no stimulation. Unfortunately in this instance a large number of cows today aren’t milked on a 12 hour interval. When we shorten the interval from 12 to 8 hours a lower percentage is available, when we lower production, as when the cow nears the end of lactation, the amount in pounds available is a moving target. [Read more…]