EFFECT OF MILKING FREQUENCY IN COMBINATION WITH RESTRICTED SUCKLING ON MILK YIELD AND CALF PERFORMANCE 1

32 Creole and Creole x Friesian cows and their calves were used to compare once or twice daily milking with or without calf suckling in a 2 x 2 factorial arrangements with 8 replications. The suckling calves were allowed to suckle their dams twice daily for the first 30 days and then once daily up to weaning at 90 days. Suckling began 30 minutes after milking and lasted for 30 minutes. Non suckling calves were bucket fed. All calves had free access to a molasses mixture containing 2.5% urea, supplemented with a mixture of 100 g fishmeal and 10 g of mineral mixture daily. The growth rate of the bucket fed calves was better (P < .001) than that of suckled calves, irrespective of milking frequency (0.31 vs 0.22 kg/d). This was attributed to their significantly higher consumption of milk (3.3 vs 2.15 kg/d) and fishmeal (0.106 vs 0.074 kg/d). Both milking frequencies and suckling had significant effects on the liveweight change of the cow (0.06 vs 0.10 kg/d for once and twice milking respectively; and -0.08 vs 0.04 kg/d for suckling and bucket feeding respectively). There was no interaction between milking frequency and suckling. . There was no difference in the amount of milk taken out by milking but cows which suckled their calves were significantly more efficient than chose which were conventionally milked in terms of total milk yield (8.55 vs 6.37 kg/d) and saleable milk (6.39 vs 3.06 kg/d). It is concluded that once daily milking with restricted suckling is the best system of management in terms of net saleable milk production, maintenance of condition in the dam and lowest operating costs.