Israeli milk yield is envy of dairy world
In just 50 years the Israelis built up a hugely successful industry, even though feeding costs are high, because all grains are imported into this arid country.
Jewish farmers also find it expensive to grow forage crops, not least because the country has the world's highest water costs.
How would they have fared if they came north to Ireland instead?
They would certainly have no water problems, and we know they have already nearly matched Irish production costs, despite Ireland's perceived pasture cost advantages, and enjoy satisfactory incomes thanks to an average farm size of more than 100 cows.
Already, Ireland imports Jewish technology for dairy farming, thus benefiting from the application of science and knowledge for many decades and the single-minded Israeli dairy industry approach to progress and development.
Few countries have succeeded as well as Israel in managing the country's entire dairy herd almost as a unit, with all the savings and other possibilities that can bring.
A 90% rate of milk recording gives a bank of high quality data unmatched anywhere in the world, which has been used profitably to genetically improve the Israeli cow at the rate of about 1,000kg of milk yield every 10 years. (Even European dairy industry leaders like Holland, Denmark and Germany are working in the dark compared to the Israelis, and Ireland is in the penny place with its paltry 33% of cows recorded).
It all started when the Templar Christians from Germany first brought cows to Israel in the 19th century, says Nahum Shpigel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Koret School of Veterinary Medicine.
The Templars were deported by the British in World War 2, but Shpigel says the British too did their bit for Israeli farming, by leaving behind an infrastructure and scientific base.
But full credit must go to the Israeli pioneers for conquering endemic local diseases like foot and mouth, rinderpest, rift valley fever, and tick and protozoan borne diseases, and building up world class dairying against the odds.
Because of diseases, only native local cattle could originally survive. These diseases still cause problems, but the overriding problem now is maintaining the health of the "metabolic monster" that the average Israeli dairy cow has become.
Mastitis, lameness and infertility are the main threats to Israel's 115,000 cows, which average 2,600 gallons per year.
Shpigel believes the country's 100% TMR (total mixed ration) feeding has been a key to Israeli dairy herd health.
Israel has 30 years of experience of diet feeding. It is the only country where huge feed centres specialise in preparing TMRs which are sold to and shipped out to farms. Relying heavily on wheat silage for forage, these centres control feed costs by using by-products of food processing, such as citrus pulp, cottonseed, wheat bran, and vegetable and fruit scraps.
Once, every farm and kibbutz commune produced its own food; very large dairy farms still have their own feed centres.
The advantage of diet feeding is, of course, that standardised feeding all year round is easier for the cow's digestive system. Dry matter intakes of 25 kg per day are common with Israeli TMRs. Every milk sample is tested for urea content, as an indicator of feed utilisation. High urea levels in milk indicate that cows are getting too rich a ration mix a costly error in a country where feed is so expensive.
The feed system is typical of the level of national control and organisation, which has enabled the dairy industry to power ahead, after more than 80 years in the making, since Jewish pioneers arrived from central Europe. Although coming from the intelligentsia and professional classes of countries like Russia and Poland, they wanted to farm the land of Israel.
In the 1920s, the first dairy farmers in the region started recording yield, fat and protein figures. Eighty years of this kind of professional approach have led to dairying success in a country which is 50% desert.
The pioneers started with native and Syrian cows, disease resistant and of good temperament, but poor milk producers.
Many breeds were tried as improvers of the local strains, but it wasn't until Israel had 600,000 new immigrants to feed in 1948 that the genetic breakthrough of importing Canadian and US Holsteins was made.
"Farmers were sceptical, but the cow adapted", says Efraim Ezra, Herdbook Manager in the Israel Cattle Breeders Association (ICBA), the farmers' grouping which directed much of the decades of progress. With artificial insemination building up to more than 95% of matings (now all done by the Sion Co-op's 36 inseminators, who cover the entire country), the genetic improvement programme went from strength to strength, guided by the farmers' strong tradition of the data collection which is vital for genetic progress.
As cows were adapted to the harsh climate through selection, yields shot up and Israeli bulls, in the international Interbull listings from the start, showed impressive ratings.
Efraim Ezra details how management and genetics had made the Israeli cow the highest yielder in the world by 1990, but the industry was still ambitious, and wanted to improve the percentage of milk solids. Farmers, through the Association and their representation on the Dairy Board with processors and the government, joined in the drive to improve milk fat and protein, and agreed a new payment system biased towards fat and protein, including a 5% penalty for milk volume.
In 14 years, geneticists, farmers and advisors have helped to raise the average milk fat content by 0.5% and protein by 0.2% showing what is possible in a well organised dairy industry. In 2003, 81,602 Israeli Holstein cows averaged 10,945 kg of milk (2,338 gallons) in 305 days at 3.49% fat and 3.09% protein.
Some farmers feel they can do better, or have been persuaded of this by commercial forces in the dairy industry. Hence the presence of a number of emerging breed alternatives to the impressive Israeli Holstein, such as the Montbeliarde, Norwegian Red, Finnish Ayrshire, and Jersey - even though the ICBA have done a good job of curbing infertility, the international scourge of the Holstein breed.
For first lactation cows, there is 43% conception to first service. Average open days are 131 for adult cows.
The average culling rate is 30%; the average cow is a third or fourth lactation milker.
As part of the effort to maintain fertility, inseminators use hand held computers to check if a mating is over the permitted in-breeding threshold. Selection of bulls and cows for favourable rump angle has also helped to ward off the infertility scourge hitting dairy farms around the world.
Now, the ICBA is steering the country's dairy cow population through a breeding and milk price policy which favours maintenance of current fat and protein contents, increasing milk constituent kg, improving fertility, improving SCC, and improving longevity, while increasing milk volume, even though the current average of 2,600 gallons (not corrected for 305 days) is already the envy of producers around the world.
The industry's unity of purpose and action has been impressive, even for a small and thus more easily organised country. At the ICBA offices in Caesarea, samples are tested from 103,500 milk recorded dairy cows, and from every shipment collected on farms by the Israeli milk processing industry. Throughout the industry, the most up to date computer technology is used to collect and store the vital data which monitors the pulse of the dairy industry.
Herds under 100 cows do their own milk recording, but the ICBA's 10 milk recorders send back returns for the bigger herds. They can go through hundreds of herds each per month. Since the mid-1980s, they have been using hand held computers to quickly record data and return it by mobile phone to the ICBA's computers. Farmers get their milk recording results in 24 hours.
The somatic cell count averages 225,000, thanks to an agreed national policy of farmer awareness and milk price penalties and bonuses.
Udder health in Israel is treated as a public health matter. Farmers can send milk samples to a central laboratory for antibiotic recommendation, and also get guidance and machine checks.
Yet another first in Israeli dairy farming was the use of the kind of computerisation which now comes with many of Ireland's newest milking parlours.
Out of the Afikim Kibbutz farm in 1979 came systems which automatically gather information on individual cow performance and health, which now compile the data and produce attention lists to alert herd managers throughout Israel to what actions are needed.
Handling large numbers of cows for decades, herd managers wanted systems that would help them keep their finger on the pulse. Now, most dairy farms have electronic milk meters which record milk yield and conductivity of the milk (which reveals udder infections), automatic cow identification, and pedometers (which pinpoint cows in heat).
The accompanying computer software lists cows for the herd manager which need treatments, vet checks, artificial insemination, or attention of some kind.
