Quality feed and top breed cows deliver results

The 336-cow farm is small by Canterbury standards – Alvin jokes it’s a toy farm – but what it lacks in size, it makes up in output and returns. Last season it produced 3048kgMS/ha and this year’s budget is 3100kgMS/ha. 

That’s no pipe dream either: 2009/10 output was 3149kgMS/ha. In both years operating profit topped $8000/ha.

While cost effective, bought-in feed – mostly vegetable processing waste – is a key part of the system, grass is the foundation, as it should be on all such System 5 farms, says local consulting officer Leighton Parker, facilitating the group.

“The big component for this group is that there’s a bigger focus on feeds, feeding strategies and the technology of that,” he told Dairy News. “It’s a slightly different focus from other discussion groups where lots of people are doing similar things.”

Jessie Dorman, a herd-owning sharemilker from Dorie and convener of the discussion group, echoes that.

“When we talk with our peers there are a lot of system three-type farms, typically system three, but we wanted to talk about specifics which apply to us. Most of us have in-shed grain feeding systems but still the focus must be on maximising pasture.”

Dorman hosted the group’s first field day. ‘Feeding to yield’ was the focus. In the case of the Holstein Friesian herd they milk, that’s a yield target of 600kgMS/cow.

The Reid’s herd isn’t achieving that, but is at least as efficient, arguably more so, last season pumping out 454kgMS/cow, or 104% of liveweight. In 2009/10 they did 109%.

“I’ve yet to be persuaded you need big cows to run an efficient high feed system,” Reid told the focus day.  “These cows are doing over a kilogramme of milksolids per kilogramme of liveweight every year.”

Sires for breeding replacements are selected for maximum BW, and culls, other than for management reasons, are selected on PW. “And we’ve gone DNA selected because I think there’s a fair jump there.”

The result is the herd is now in the top 50 in the country for BW. With heifers mated to top ranked Jerseys, it’s also increasingly Jersey.

With such a high BW, “culls” on PW are generally sold as budget cows, rather than sent to the works. Culls on udder issues are noted now. “There’s no point looking at udders in the autumn to decide which cows, if any, you’re going to cull on udder. You’ve got to look in the spring. We’re not after a show-cow udder but we want a practical udder.”

Replacements are reared in-house, on a different farm.  An electronics enthusiast, Reid has built his own computerised, automated calf feeders for about $7000 each, compared to $20,000 or so for commercial models.

With four other farms, all much bigger than the home farm, there are plenty of calves coming in to use them. All get a feed of colostrum by tube, then go onto the automated feeders. Within a day most are onto it, and within a week all. “We have 450 calves on 12 teats.”

The length of time different calves take to drink their ration from the feeders has highlighted the uneven feed allocation of calfeterias. “Some [slow drinkers] may be getting 0.5 L while some get 6 L.”

For the cows, the key feed other than grass is vegetable processing waste, mostly potatoes, potato peel and reject chips. Once a relatively cheap feed, it is becoming less so as other farms, notably those housing cows, begin to use it. Reid forsees the day when he has to find an alternative.

When he started using it, 30 years ago, the deal was he took it all, no matter what. It was affordable but sometimes a big pile would build up, despite feeding as much as possible – at times up to 8kgDM/head/day.

If they weren’t careful, that would cause metabolic problems, and these days “there has to be a really good reason to go over 4kg/head of potatoes.”

The veg waste is always fed with a fibre at 2:1, plus minerals. Currently they’re using maize silage, though wholecrop triticale silage used in the past was arguably a better ration balancer, he told the field day.

Total target feed intake for the average 435kg lwt cow in the herd is 17.5kgDM/cow. Pasture is allocated at 40m²/cow in early spring rising to around 70m²/cow by mid spring.

Residuals are closely monitored, but rather than stick dogmatically to a platemeter reading, Reid has his own ready reckoner of whether the cows are doing a good enough job to ensure quality on their return. “They need to halve the height of the grass on the dung patches.”