Buttery prize
OPINION: Westland Milk may have won the contract to supply butter to Costco NZ but Open Country Dairy is having…
AN AUSTRALIAN first – an above-ground effluent storage tank – is fixing problems for a Tasmanian farmer and is an aid to major research into methane gas emissions.
DESPITE A favourable winter and early spring, this season’s lower forecast milk price shows how quickly things can change. Farm budgets are vital, says DairyNZ economist Angie Fisher.
DAIRY FARMERS need to act now to avoid going backwards once the forecast payout starts to bite next year, says Justin Geddes, agribusiness principal at Crowe Horwath.
RESPIRATORY DISEASE in calves and young stock can occur sporadically as isolated cases, but also as outbreaks.
ARE YOUR cell counts increasing and above 100,000 and is your clinical mastitis above 10% of the herd for the whole year? If so, it will be costing you money.
UNHEALTHY ANIMALS ruin any farmer’s day. The extra time and out-of-pocket costs for treatment add up, especially as your herd grows. Most health issues your herd faces can be managed, monitored and improved through management and recording processes.
BREEDING NEW fast-growing grass varieties that produce more seeds and are resistant to drought, pests, grazing and disease may inadvertently be creating the next generation of invasive weeds, researchers say.
CANTERBURY WILL host two EnviroReady field days this month to help farmers prepare for changes under Environment Canterbury’s land and water regional plan.
MANY DAIRY farmers in the Gippsland region of Victoria, Australia, are caught in the same position as Trevor Mills a year ago. He was grappling with issues of farm scale on his 180-cow unit, trying to balance a need to increase the flexibility of his time against the economic realities of volatile milk returns and labour costs.
BOUGHT-IN FEED costs are a major influence on farmgate margins in many dairy exporting regions, and are a key driver of global dairy supply.
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FEW PEOPLE have been more prominent in Northland dairy farming in recent years than DairyNZ Northland regional manager Tafi Manjala.
FOUR OUT of five of the latest Nuffield Scholarship winners are from the dairy industry.
The attempt by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council to impose new and tighter limits on how much nitrogen farmers in the Rotorua Lakes catchment will be allowed to leach is clearly running into trouble.
Dairy farmers searching for efficiencies in their operation know that homegrown, fully utilised pasture has always been the most cost-effective feed. Even before the current downturn, many farmers were not only looking at output ratios such as milk solids per cow, but also at feed efficiency ratios such as the cost of producing a megajoule of metabolisable energy per kg of dry matter.
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Gene Bill rumours
OPINION: The Gene Technology Bill has divided the farming community with strong arguments on both the pros and cons of…
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