... the road to more grass,lower costs and higher profits ... |
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... the road to more grass,lower costs and higher profits ... |
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On Thursday 26th March the North Down Grassland Management Team and the Ardglass Grassland Group had a joint meeting at Streamvale, the farm of Timothy Morrow.
Timothy has recently been able to add to his grazing area by renting ground from a neighbour. He now farms 80 hectares all of which is accessible for grazing by the dairy cows (although about 20 hectares is used by young stock). With the advice of well known New Zealand consultant Leonie Foster he has been making many changes to his farming operation. He has increased his cow numbers recently and now has 170 cows. |
| Perhaps the most important thing to understand about the new system of operation is that Timothy no longer has any silage ground. Every field can and will be grazed. Timothy reckons that next winter he will need only 3 tonnes of silage per cow. He already has 1.5 tonnes of silage left over from this year so he will only need to make a further 1.5 tonnes of silage this summer. Timothy anticipates that he will cut silage in June when grass growth allows.
With such a large grazable area and silage making well and truly on the back burner Timothy doesn't intend to sow any more fertiliser until August. Current grass cover on the farm is around 2,500 kgDM/ha which Timothy considers to be too high. He considers it very important to eat the covers down to a low residual of around 1,500 kgDM/ha. |
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The cows have been out at grass night and day with no silage since the 13th March. At the time of the visit they were yielding 26 litres per day. Most cows were being fed 1.5 kg of meal per day with a few high yielders getting 2.5 kg. This means that Timothy is getting around M+23 litres from March grass alone. Other members of the Ardglass group had cows out with no meal at all and had an average yield of 23 litres. A quick in field calculation proved that 17 kgs of grass dry matter with an ME of 12 will provide enough energy for maintenance plus 23 litres. It was pointed out by Patrick Clarke that the higher yielding cows could well be eating 20 kgs of grass dry matter which could support M+30 litres! |
| On the subject of milk yields and concentrate feeding. Timothy expressed dissatisfaction with his current dairy cow genetics. Timothy's new farm philosophy has little room for cows who yield more milk than grass alone can supply. In order to correct this Timothy is now using New Zealand semen. He stated that this is, "not low genetic semen but high genetic semen from bulls whose off spring have been proven on a all grass system, they are smaller and will cause less poaching, will graze aggressively and not stand up against a hedge in bad weather and who have good fertility". The very competitive price of New Zealand semen means that Timothy's AI bill has been cut in half.
Timothy is in the final stages of shifting his calving pattern from autumn to spring. Next year the heifers will start calving on the 1st February and the cows will start calving on the 15th February. Timothy hope to have the milking cows out night and day from the time that they calve. |
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