DairyCo
Welcome to DairyCo
Research & Development
- Breeding & Genetics
- Environment
- Health & Welfare
- Grass & Forage
- Nutrition
- Production Systems
- Completed Projects
- Across breed evaluations
- All weather cow tracks
- Calving Ease
- Crop Protection Priorities for forage and feed crops in light of proposed EU pesticide regulations and other changes
- DairyCo mobility score
- Desktop review of Greenhouse Gases
- Expanding Indices
- GR Micro test for ParaTB (08/09)
- Human resources templates
- Impact of bio-fuels on dairy feeding
- Labour efficiency report
- Labour productivity
- LINK Woodchip pads
- LISA Lupins
- Minimising slurry pooling in dairy housing
- Modelling of Greenhouse Gases
- Muck and Slurry on Clover swards
- Muscling on Holsteins
- Near Infra-Red Spectroscopy (NIRS) tests for farmyard manures
- Opportunites for new forage species
- Outwintering systems based on forage brassicas for replacement dairy heifers
- Para TB Tools
- Rearing options for Holstein bull calves to 12 weeks
- Reduce methane & nitrogen emission (Defra AC0209)
- Reducing heifer wastage in the dairy herd
- Reducing lameness in dairy cattle
- Ruminant nutrition regimes to reduce methane and nitrogen emissions
- Soil stabilisation
- Technology and your business
- Treatment and prevention of foot lameness in cattle
- Advisory Groups
- Research and Development Advisory Forum
- Forum Members
Labour efficiency report
Published 18 November 10
This project was to gather labour data from a range of farms throughout GB covering the different systems in place and different herd sizes.
The methodology was adapted from pervious DairyCo studies looking at labour use. A database has been developed which splits labour use into non specific and cow specific tasks. There was a wide variation between systems in terms of total time and cow specific tasks.
Grazing systems had the lowest times and more traditional farming types the highest with total mixed ration systems in-between. The grazing systems showed a strong relationship between increasing herd size and reduction in labour input but this relationship was not as strong with the other systems.
This project provides opportunities to review labour alongside Milkbench+ and also allows benchmarking within discussion groups. This allows promotion of best practice and/ or how to improve labour efficiency.