Drenching manually to get extra energy into early-lactation cows at risk of ketosis due to a negative energy balance is no longer needed on the Arfman family farm in the Netherlands.
Instead, Henk Arfman and son Andre, who run 160 cows and 90 followers at Vorden near the German border, installed the MultiDos system – the successor to the popular Hanskamp PropyDos – in June 2014. Developed by Hanskamp, the Dutch manufacturer specialising in innovation for dairy farming, it’s a simple, robust means of providing cows with liquid feed in addition to concentrates.
The Arfmans use two DeLaval milking robots with the MultiDos system installed on both. Fixed to the wall the MultiDos is connected to a container of liquid additives.
A special Hanskamp tube that’s durable, transparent and impervious to heat, takes the liquid through the machine to pour a pre-set amount directly onto the concentrates offered to the cow entering the robot.
“Our cows easily consume the additive containing glycerol, niacin, biotin and cobalt, so a negative energy balance and Ketosis in early lactation cows is no longer a problem,” Andre Arfman said.
“Gone is the need to manually dose cows, a labour-intensive chore that cows certainly did not like. MultiDos is cow-friendly and there’s no problem getting them to eat the concentrates with liquid added.
“All our freshly calved cows now receive this liquid feed through the MultiDos system. We just have to program into the computer how much of each product each individual cow is to get and the system does the rest.”
As well as propylene glycol, having the MultiDos system in the dairy unit means a whole range of additives, vitamins and minerals can be fed. The system has already been installed on several British farms .
For more information visit: www.hanskampagrotech.nl/en/.
