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Effect of Milking Throughout Pregnancy on Milk Yield in the Succeeding Lactation

Animal Husbandry and Dairying Research Institute, Irene, South Africa

J. V. Wheelock and F. H. Dodd

National Institute for Research in Dairying, Shinfield, Reading, England

ABSTRACT

Recently Swanson (3), using identical twins, has demonstrated that cows milked throughout pregnancy produce in their next lactation only about 70% of the milk yield of their mates which had normal dry periods of two months. In our experiment, part of a study of the importance of the dry period between successive lactations, effects of treatments similar to those used by Swanson have been compared between different quarters of the same cow rather than between individual cows.

Ten weeks before the expected date of parturition, the right-fore and left-hind (control) quarters of two pregnant Friesian cows in their first lactation were dried off by suspension of milking, whereas the left-fore and right-hind (experimental) quarters continued to be machine-milked twice daily throughout the whole of pregnancy. At regular intervals, the cows were milked with a milking machine designed for the separate collection of the milk from individual quarters, and the yields recorded.

¹ Present address: National Institute for Research in Dairying, Shinfield, Reading, England.