RamdomChances

I've got quite a few of the same tree's (can't remember the name) and they all have the same thing, I don't think it's much to worry about.

Oh just showed the wife the pic, she said "yea they all have that no need to worry"....so they will probaly be dead tomorrow

1) Urea should not exceed 1% of total DM - to exceed this figure will result in reduced total feed intake and result in slower growth - a total contradiction to the objective.

Now most of the litriture you see printed on urea treated straw(Fang Mak) states that one of the advantages of it is that it actually makes the straw more palatable so the cows will actually increase their intake of straw (I'll attest to this being true as mine did).

Now if we assume that the original straw is dry and 20kg a bail (I know it's not but probably 90% +). Now if my memory serves me right they were eating on ave about half a bail/day (ad lib) so that would work out at :-

(20kg/2)x 2% = .2 kg

If they were getting 8 kg of concentrate as well then their total intake would be 18kg a day so for a DM intake of not more than 1% that would mean a max of .18kg of urea a day.

(These are very rough figures for an "average" cow with lot of )

So I was feeding above the 1%, do you think this could explain the gradual decreace in production, it may well explain that even with a small amount of fresh grass the production shot staight up ?

Oh I forgot to put this link in earlier, it may be of intrest to TT

Utilization of agricultural by-products as livestock feeds in Africa

The ingredient that gives the biggest bang for the Baht is urea (46.0.0). Add 2% (20 kilos per ton) and it raises protien 5%. 20 kilos of urea costs about 240 Baht. Care should be taken due to the toxic nature of urea. Protien obtained from urea should not constitute more than 50% of total protien in the mix.

Regards

It's not quite as simple as that though is it ?....or am I wrong? You just can't feed Urea and you have to have a base for it to react to. Like I've said before I had some good results with Fang Mak but sort of hit a wall after about 6 months, mabye I was feeding it at too high levels. Just for intrest I used to use 100 kg for 280 bails of Fang and according to everything I read it should of lifted it from about 3 % to about 8% I was buying in Fang at 17-20 bhat/bail delivered and put into the silos (I estermated a bail to be 15-20 kg by sample)

So using the worst figs 15kg fang for 20 bhat = 1.3 bhat/kg plus 1000 bhat urea/280 bails/15 kg = 3.57 = 0.24 That would give me something like 1.54 bhat/kg. Apparently cassava goes very well with Fang Mak, something to do with by-pass protiens

From the other thread we were talking 1,860 for pinapple silage or 1.86 bhat/Kg for 7% I would assume you would not have the same problems with feeding that and it will probably have a higher Carb/energy content.

I've been reading quite a bit today about Maize "stovers" aparently they can be treated with urea as well. I'm a bit confused with wether they are talking about the actuall husk part of the cob or the residual plant, further complicated by some stating about 8% and others as low as less than 3%. One link, which I can no longer find was talking about Maize straw which I would definatly assume to be the plant leftover (dried), anyway it's a bit late now, but how about sohgam stalks ?

Any I deas on what to use for a concentrate mix ?

I would have thought that raw peanuts would make an expensive feed. Found this.

Thanks for that, I was only thinking of useing them just to up the protien content, as if I'm going to try to get to about 18% there has to be something to bring that up. The thing is they are fairly readily avalible here and if I get direct from the farm then mabye this will offset the cost.

Most of the other high value protien sources I would have to buy from a supplier, therfore incuring his cut as well. I've used the plant part before with some sucsess, the problem with it is geting a supply and storing it.

I'd be intrested in Soya as well but they dont seem to grow it around here.

I was thinking mabye peanuts, cassava and something as a base, the more ingrediants you put in the more your transport cost are going to be.

Ok the dry season is upon us and it looks like it's going to be a tough one. So has anyone got any suggestions tips on what would be the best bought in forage/food for your bhat. I'm also looking at doing my own concentrate mix, I used to have a link with some "recipies" but for some reason firefox lost all my links and I can't for the life of me find it any more. The idea is to save a bit of money on the bagged food to enable me to spend a bit more on forage.

What's peanut like as a protien source for cattle they grow quite a lot around here and I could buy direct from the farm (they would probably throw the plant bit in as well)

I was thinking about the corncobs. Same protien as rice straw. Could it be mixed with urea and molassas, same as the fang mak, and ensiled 15 days?

I've thought about that before and the left overs from the maize crop (just the dried bit thats left), not sure you can ensile it though. I had pretty good sucsess with Fang Mak, for a while but at 50 bhat a bail it would not be worth it (is that for rice straw !!!!?). I think I'll open a new thread on "food" and we'll try and keep this one for "sources"

We do quite a lot of Casssava around here, I'll try and find out some prices, there's also a factroy doing 30kg bagged maize sialge, again I'll try and find out some details.

Anyone used that Siam foods pinapple silage, the price does'nt seem that bad.

It think with sourcing raw materials some of the problems are going to be transportation costs and having to buy in bulk, if you can't find things localy it can really bump the price up.

Have a look at this thread and join in

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=87368

^ OK Tim we'll sort something out by PM, Nov in Loei sound's a bit chilly, will I have to break my flece's out

What about a thread for raw material sourcing. I.e. soybean meal, fishmeal, corn gluten, mineral mixes, ect. It could be broken down into sections. Livestock section could be fish fingerlings, chicks for growing out, layers, lambs, calves, piglets ect....I'm sure you get the idea.

Regards

Good idea TT ( sorry I have'nt got back to you...I forgot ) Personaly I have'nt a clue on most of them and I think a lot would come down to local knowlage. Why not open a post for it and if we get some good contacts out of it, I'll sort them out and pin it.

RC

delavel is fine, I would'nt be intested in the pump anyway, I've got spares

yes - you'll have to come and pick it all up.

When would a good time for that be

^ whats the make of the milking sets ? I might be interested If IG is'nt

I could pick them up

IG if you are seriously planing this THINK VERY CARFULY ABOUT WHAT YOU WILL FEED THEM...sorry for shouting but I can not stress how inportant that is.

I but and sell often so my stock is very "fluid" I don't raise many calf's at the now as cows are so cheap at the moment. Over the years I've built up quite a few contacts around the area and down aroung Korat/Lopburi area, so basicaly when I'm looking for stock we just make some phone call's telling people what we want and wait, out of area people will expect a "finders fee" about 500 bhat a head, unless they happen to be traders, but you'd pay a bit more anyway off a trader as he want his cut. Most are probaly bought localy.

I have a pretty good working relationship with a guy here that trades in predominantly beef, but often buys up whole dairy farms (often sold if the people are just getting out). If he knows I'm looking for stock he'll give me a call and I get the pick, usually at about a coule of 1000 bhat more than the value as beef. I sometimes hold dairy stock for him until he can get rid of it as well (I feed them but get the milk)

If you go and buy cattle be very careful, everyone will try and overcharge you, this is nothing to do with you being a "falang" but more to do with you not knowing the true value of the cows, everyone tries to buy/sell for the best price they can, it's part of the game....every cow I own would be for sale, at the right price

Milking Machines - MF uses a full auto system, they are expensive for all but the biggest farms, we use semi-auto, you can see them in the pic below. You buy a pump that can cope with 1,2,4,6,8 milking sets, generaly 1 milking set to 10-15 cows, the more sets you have the quicker you will milk. I used to do about 80 in around hour and a half with 2 people and 4 sets. SAC has the best name here for reliability, 1 set will cost something like 30,000 bhat (I have'nt bought one for a while, I think they were more like 26,000 last time I did). The pumps, going from my poor memory say 20,000 for a 4 set pump, get a pump a size bigger than you think you'll need the differance in cost is'nt that much and you have room for expansion if you need it.

Underneath is something I copied from another thread, it might be of intrest to you and highlights some of the problems involved. If you want to come on over at all to have a look your welcome, but I've stocked right down at the moment.

A bit of history

When I fisrt moved up here with the idea of starting the farm I was pretty unsure about the whole sheme, all but 7 rai of land was rented out and would not be avalible for another 2 years, so we built a smallish milking palour (10 stalls) holding area and some feed stations on what we had and just chucked some jumbo into the rest. I started out with about 10 cows to see if it was actually profitable, we were just hand cutting the jumbo. As the farm grew there was no way the couple of rai we has would support the cows, but we had aquired a lorry as well running mainly chicken food and I was looking for extra work for it. The province next to us there is a big co-op growing pangular, so we started doing runs every 2 day (its bailed but does'nt keep long) and selling /delivering it to the local farms as well, this proved quite succsessful, so much in fact that I was virtually geting my own pangular for free.

With the avalibliity of virtually unlimited cheap forage,we expanded more, the original farm was no longer big enough, but by this time the rest of the land was back in our hands. So we decided to build a new set up, the first year we had the land back I was'nt really interested in doing much with it as we were busy building the new farm and my forage was taken care of, so I just let the family use it.

The following year I was keen to try cash crops, using the cash to pay for forage, we had grown to about 100+ milkers by then. It was around this time the problems started, the co-op selling the grass was getting more orders than it could supply so basicaly started rationing the stuff, we were ok but could not increase our order, then all of a sudden they decided to basicaly double the price of the stuff from 1 bhat/kg to 2bhat/kg. I could'nt sell any at that price and paying the transport costs plus extra for the grass just for me was'nt viable, so with the already put over to cash crops we had to look for an alternative. Enter "Fang Mak". Initialy we just went over to fang while I had the fang mak silos built, milk production droped by about 40% but my costs were sugnificantly reduced as well, not enough to make up the differance but it helped. When the "mak"came online my production shot straight back up and remained there, nearly to the levels when we were feeding fresh grass (pangolar) but consiberably cheaper, problem sloved we thought, so continued with trying various cash crops looking for things we could sell and use the reminder for the cattle, had some sucsess with peanuts using the palnt as a suplement to the fang mak and selling the nuts. About 6 months after feeding the Mak the milk production started to drop off and continued doing so back down to the levels of straight fang, on top of this fang had nearly doubled in price due to fuel price increaces and quite frankly for the first time since opening we were making a loss. So we downsized and decided to switch to trying to grow enough forage for the cows.

Enter this year, we had some very early rain here about feb/march so decided to chuck some jumbo in and see what happened, it started slow but using some sprinklers we managed to get enough that we we cutting by april, we are still cutting the same stuff, but gradualy, instead of cutting and re-growing, we are cutting and re-ploughing and going over to russi, well in parts. Some we are going to continue with jumbo as the lower parts of the land get a bit wet for ruzzi. Milk production is back up and profitablity/head is better than it ever has (although with less cows).

So basicaly this year is the first year we have really looked at forage managment on a large scale (we tried a few rai of differant stuff previously) and the nessesity of getting something up and growing lead to the whole lot being put over to Jumbo. One of the problems at the moment is when it gets too wet we cant get on the land to cut so have had to graze the cows on some parts of it. Jumbo does'nt take well to grazing with little re-growth, so we are slowly changing to russi. I'm hoping to have enough until about dec/jan but there wont be enough for silage. I can keep about 10 rai gowing with sprinklers and am hoping that and with additional fan/fang mak will see me through the dry season, but overall at the moment I'd say our land utilisation was only at about 50%, some areas of the jumbo did'nt take too well as we planted so early, plus it all came at more or less the same time so some of what we are feeding is past it's best. I'm planning on switching more to ruzzi and strip grazing, with some Jumbo as a back up for cut'n'carry, if the ruzzi is sucsessful I'll probably switch over completly, or mabye grow jumbo for silage, the fang mak silos can easily be converted for silage making.

Any suggestions are more than welcome

RC

Take a walk down Naresuan Road, Chang House is pretty good with a mixed crowd of Thai and Falang good food as well, the coffee shop next door is pretty popular with local falangs, good coffe and "falang breakfasts. There are quite a few places along that road.

Yea, mine are based on milking cattle, so that would be the average of the cow's I'm actually milking.

In simple terms, I you get a 1 year cycle, 2 months of it will be dry, therefore to be milking (on average) 10 cows a day you would need to own 12 cows, don't forget you have to support the dry cows as well and any calf's if you decide to raise them.

I'd be looking for at least 20 kg a day off a cow just after giving birth, any less than that and it's a candidate for sale (eventualy). I dry off 2 month's before birth (generaly) or when the production drops to 5 kg a day. At that point I would then decide if the cow was worth keeping or not. I'll add my stock if far from premium stock ....a good cow is one you can make money off.

I generaly dont bother buying anything unless its verifably pregnant....unless it's really cheap

Ok I'll wade in here as well as if you do actually start dairy you will probaly start something closer to mine than MF's. MF runs for what I can see a very professional farm run along the lines of a European system (batch clafing, all year avalibility of quality forage,fully automatic milking, computerised feeding and milk wieghing ?) there are very few dairy farm concerns that run that way here due to lack of knowlage and initial start up costs

Milk production- A cow will be at peak production generaly about a month after calfing, then you are on the downward slope until it drops so much that the cow becomes economicaly unviable to carry on milking i.e you milk output is less in value than your food input. Idealy we try and calf a cow every year. You will not get anywhere near the figures MF quoted as an average production. The national average is around 10 kg/day, I do around 12-14 (as long as I have quality forage)

Insemination/calfing - I belive MF batches his cattle in regaurdes to insemination and therefore calfing, in most cases this is not possible due to the relitively low conseption rates. (MF if I'm wrong in any of my assumptions please correct me). We inseminate basicaly about 2-3 months after they give birth, so idealy we will always have a percentage of cow's dryed off, at their milking peak and at at their lowest production (just before drying off). The advantage of doing it in a batch is that you can time the birth to when you have the best conditions (climate and food) to achive optimal milk production. It is something I would like to do but due to a number of factors we don't (poor conseption rates, poor heat detection, lack of avalible vet) so we just do it when we can, one advantage of this method is that you even out the peaks and troughs of milk production.

Dry Period - As a very general rule of thumb 2 months. If the cow is particualry thin give it longer. Sometimes if you have problems sucsesfully inseminating a cow it could be say 6 month into it's cycle. In this case we would milk it until is just not viable anymore and then dry it off or sell it.

Food/forage - This is by far the biggest issue in dairy farming, you get out what you put in. Most people use bagged food concentrate fed at 1 kg of food for 2 kg of milk production ( eg a cow giving you 20 kg of milk a day would recive 10 kg of food) this is on top of any forage they eat. Obviously if you have very good quality forage you can drop this ratio, you also have to look at the "body condition" of the cow, but its just a rule of thumb. Some people mix thier own concentrate which can work out at about half the price, you just have to weigh up the avaliblity of produce, storage, somewhere to mix it and the added labout involved

Forage - The single biggest factor IMO affecting you production and the ammount of cattle you are able to keep economicaly, it also has impacts on conseption rates. The vast majority of small scale dairy farms are not self sufficiant in their forage requirments. Many will have to rely on rice straw for a large ammount of the year (some all the time). Rice straw (Fang) is basicaly the bottom of the barrel when it comes to forage, you'r milk production will drop significanlty over any fresh produce plus you will have the added expence of having to buy the straw.

For exapmle, you have an average cow giving 12 kg a day @ 6 kg of concentrate food (say 6 bhat/kg) that works out at 36 bhat a day to feed it sell the milk for say 11.50 bhat/kg = 138 bhat so you make around 100 bhat a day

You have to buy in Straw (in my experiance estimate around a bail and a half a day) depending on wether you are buying in bulk or not this will more or less double you feed costs, so you are up to say 70 bhat a day for feed. On top of this your milk production is likely to drop by about 30-40% so you now only have 8 kg or 92 bhat/day, take off the feed cost and your left with 12 baht/cow/day !!!

add in staff, fuel, medicen, maintanance ect and you can see why many dairy farms have gone out of buissines in the last year or so.

There are other forages you can buy but at an increaced cost, you just need to wiegh up the inputs and outputs, we can buy in fresh "pangular" grass which is very good but at 2 bhat/kg it's double the cost of straw plus being fresh has a lower dry matter content so the cow's will eat generaly twice as much of it.

and in very rough terms I would say that for every 100kg's of weight that that animal is it willbe eating about 30 - 35kg of fresh forage of which about 4.5 - 5.5kg is Dry Matter

Do you feed forage add-lib ? that figure seems on the high side to me. It would mean a 500 kg cow eating 150 kg of forage a day, back when we used to have a cheap ready supply of pangular feed add-lib, we probaly averaged about 40-50 kg/day.

Cheese is made in thailand, I've seen a small company in Chiang Mai, making Motzarella and I think some others. I'm sure I read that the Pizza Company is the biggest cheese maker here, although it uses it all.

Potatos are grown usually "up north"

"Spiting into a volcano" sort of comes to mind, thats enough to feed about 100 cows for 5 days....better than nothing though I suppose

Split from The "pond construction" thread

I've split the slow sand filter bit's into there own thread

Ok I've moved the Makua post to their own topic, so some of the post here may look a little disjointed

I've split this out of it's original topic's, as there seems to be a lot of intrest in it. Sorry if the post look a little disjointed

It would be interesting to know how much a Thai person would be fined for the same offence. I can garantee you it would not be 3000 quid

It was 5 people so 600 quid each

I think RDC takes the wind out my sail in the sense that had I been “on air” at the time my reply would have been almost the same as his word for word.

Don't worry you do the same to me all the time

And there are other crops that will generate a better return than both of the above – maize is one.

That really suprises me, even if you knock my 1/3 off for staggering growth that would still leave rubber with 800/bhat/rai/month (your figures) thats nearly 10,000/rai/year!! We live in a predominantly Maize growing area and I've never heard of anyone even getting even close to those figures. Are you able to double crop it ? if so with or without irrigation ?

I fully agree with the samll intensive 'market garden" type thing if you only have a few rai

I've cleaned this thread up a bit if any of you are wondering why some posts are missing. There are lots of places on the forum if you just want to go and play. This sectiction is'nt one of them, feel free to PM me if you disagree

RC