Overseer has traditionally only been able to model relatively simplistic milking frequencies.
Work by DairyNZ has shown that increasingly farmers are adapting their milking frequency according to season, climate and lifestyle choices. DairyNZ advice on this can be found here.
Overseer is now able to represent more flexible approaches to milking frequency, as identified in the survey work conducted by DairyNZ, show in Figure 1.
Figure 1, National survey statistics for milking frequency over time
Flexible milking within Overseer provides the ability to represent the use of traditional once-a-day (OAD) or twice-a-day (TAD) milking as well as the most common forms of flexible milking - milking three times in two days (3-in-2) and ten milkings in seven days (10-in-7).
Milking frequency data entry has now been moved from the Enterprise (dairy) level to the Herd level:
The user must select a default milking frequency, and can then select periods of dates (between the defined mean calving and drying off dates) when alternate milking frequencies are utilised.
The software is set so that these dates cannot overlap e.g. in the example above the 3 in 2 period ends on 27 March, the 10 in 7 period can only start from 28 March at the earliest.
If a farm has more than one dairy herd represented then each will have their own milking frequency schedule.