Chief scientist Dr Eric Hillerton told Dairy News the trial is to discover the farm’s water usage with a view to providing this data to farmers so they can use water more efficiently.
“So we are interested in knowing how much water we have for cows to drink and do these requirements actually change when we feed cows differently.
“We are interested in the areas where farmers can’t get enough water with regulatory requirements coming in, and of course we ‘re very interested in the quality of the water we use to farm. For example… farmers have to rinse their milking plant twice and we’re asking, do we have the quality water to do that?”
Water meters are being installed in the dairy sheds and other parts of the farm. Farmers will be encouraged to visit the site, where displays will show their findings.
“It will be good to show dairy farmers and say to them ‘do you know how much water you use to wash down the yard?’ How much do you use to wash down the plant or whatever? They will be able to look at the data coming in from the meters which will show water use at any particular time.”
Hillerton says during the recent drought, though dairy farms managed to get enough water for their stock, unless they were on irrigated land there was not enough water to grow pasture. Storing water off dairy shed or outbuilding roofs may be possible. Hillerton noted that Israel is particularly savvy in prudently using water.
DairyNZ has installed an effluent system to demonstrate to farmers what is being done. “Somebody said to me, ‘it’s Rolls Royce effort’. Well it probably is, but farmers can come and see what we can do.”
A farmer Hillerton recently spoke to was considering installing an effluent system like the one at DairyNZ, and he now plans to visit DairyNZ and see what they have done.
