Grazing to lower covers cuts costs on dairy farm

Leo Donkers (left) and Willsden farm manager Terry Kildare have proved the benefits of greater feed quality for higher milk production on their large scale Canterbury dairy operation.

13-03-2006 | Sandra Taylor

The adoption of the grazing practices demonstrated by the Lincoln University dairy farm has resulted in significant cost savings for a Canterbury dairy farming company.

The Camden group of companies operates three dairy farms in the Te Pirita, Dunsandel area, all of which have adopted the system of grazing residues to 1500kg DM/ha in an effort to drive feed efficiencies and reduce the use of supplementary feed.

Under this system feed quality sets total production, not peak production.

Looking specifically at Willsden, one of the Camden farms, this season the use of this grazing system has enabled 420kg/ha/DM to be harvested as supplementary feed that at 20c/kg/DM is worth $25,704.

Prior to the use of this grazing system no surpluses had been able to be harvested on Willsden.

As well as being able to harvest surpluses, the adoption of principled grazing practices has enabled the company to lift cow numbers on the 306ha effective dairy platform, to 1050 cows or 3.60 cows/ha.

Production this season is expected to be 450kg MS/cow, and this will be achieved by feeding consistently high quality feed, and keeping the cows in milk for an average of 275 days.

While column inches have been written about the success of this disciplined grazing regime on the Lincoln University dairy farm (LUDF), the Camden operation is proof the system can work on a large-scale operation challenged by lighter and less fertile soils, a less reliable water system and time-hungry staff.

At a field day held at Willsden last month, Leo Donkers, a major shareholder and operations manager of the business, says the fall in the payout three years ago forced them to rethink their system of driving production in autumn by feeding supplement, a system that under the reduced pay-out was no longer economically viable.

“We were looking for a better system and this coincided with the work coming out of Lincoln.”

Donkers says previous bench-marking was driven by share prices and payout and at what price they could source supplement.

“Basically we flew by the seat of our pants, we didn’t look at feed efficiencies or feed quality.”

Historically their pasture allowance system was a one-man system, where one person would walk the farm and allocate feed. Now farm manager Terry Kilday carries out farm “walks” (actually rides a motorbike) at least once a week (more often after rain) measuring residuals.

The results are extrapolated onto a pictorial plan in the form of a bar graph. This graph is visible to all staff so everyone knows where the cows will be grazed next.

Donkers describes the system as being simple, sustainable and is repeatable across all three Camden farms.

Unlike the staff at the Lincoln University Dairy Farm (LUDF), time restraints means Kilday only measures residues by eye assessment. He says he got his eye in measuring residues while working for dairy management consultant John Donkers, and this skill is now serving him well. While he admits he might not be absolutely accurate with his measurements, the key, he says, is consistency.

The results are recorded on a pasture cover recorder before being extrapolated onto the bar graph showing the longest to shortest grass growth paddocks.

A line is drawn from highest ideal pre-graze covers, (on Willsden farm this is 2700kg DM/ha) to post grazing covers of 1500kg DM/ha.

Any covers above this line are surpluses and can be either turned into supplementary feed, used to extend the round length, or if possible cow numbers can be lifted.

Dexcel consultant Corrigan Sowman says farmers don’t need a computer to build a feed wedge, all they need is some sort of structure such as the one available on the Dexcel website.

The cows on Willsden are shifted every 24 hours, and put on a fresh break after the evening milking.

This way they know the cows have been fully fed overnight, and decisions can be made around manipulating the grazing regime the next morning. For example if the cows have left too much residue overnight, they may be sent back to the paddock to clean up after milking.

At the time of the field day in the middle of February the cows were on a 23-day rotation. This will be extended out to 34 days by the beginning of March to make use of surplus autumn pasture.

The cows are run in two mobs of around 500, but numbers in each of the mobs can be manipulated in order to achieve even grazing to residues of 1500kg DM/ha. This is because different pasture varieties over the farm grow at different rates at different times of the season.

One of the keys to the success of the implementation of the LUDF grazing system is that both Donkers and Kilday bought into the regime, and were determined to make it work.

Kilday says the staff also picked up the system really quickly as the improvement in feed quality became really obvious.

While the staff may not be able to accurately measure a range of pasture covers by eye, they all know what 1500kg DM/ha looks like.

Kilday says Willsden really got into the system of assiduous pasture management and grazing residues to 1500kg DM/ha in spring two years ago, an ideal time because over winter the cows are conditioned to eat everything put in front of them.

That year the cows dribbled back from their winter run-off (also owned by the Camden company) coinciding with pasture growth, and the system was easy to implement.

This year was not so easy. Extraordinary growth on the dairy platform over winter meant pasture was getting away on them right from the start of spring.

In hindsight, some cows should have been brought back from the winter run-off to manage pastures on Willsden.

“We needed cows back here over winter in order to flatten the wedge.

“This year the wedge was quite steep and we couldn’t get on top of feed.”

To try and control and get on top of the feed, silage was made as early as September 16, one day before it snowed. Not ideal.

Nitrogen, a total of 230kg/ha, is used to boost pastures throughout the season. Donkers says he is a great advocate of Eco.N, and this year this product was used over half the farm and will be used over the whole farm next season.

By using this product they are expecting to be able reduce N applications to 200kg/ha in the future, specifically reducing autumn applications.

John Donkers of DairyManagement Services, who has input into the financial management of the business, says while they are still getting good responses from N, the soils are not as hungry as they were in year one of the conversion.

Leo Donkers says the focus on pasture quality had highlighted the fact that the Willsden farm is understocked, and they intend to lift cow numbers to 1075 next season.

While they are having to strategically mechanically top parts of some paddocks to achieve even grazing residues of 1500kg DM/ha (indicating they are understocked), this is having to be balanced with the fact that Te Pirita is very exposed to the Nor’ West and is prone to becoming very dry.

He says the challenge is to manage a six-week window between late December and early February where high temperatures and winds means evapotranspiration greatly exceeds the 3.5mm/ha/day the four Briggs rotorainers on the property are applying at that time of the year.

Despite taking a cautious approach because of this difficult time of the year, Kilday and Donkers still had enough grass and confidence under these new grazing rules to have made baleage on Willsden for two years in row. This has occurred on top of an increased stocking rate.

In 2004/2005 the baleage, worth 20c/kg DM was worth $19,200. This was grass that previously would not have been utilised.

This year no baleage has been purchased to make use of feed on hand, and a total of 420kg DM/ha has been harvested off the milking platform. This, at 20c/kg DM, is worth $25,704.

Of course the whole crux of Camden Farms business is the bottom line, and this is where the LUDF grazing system comes to the fore.

While it does require more work in so far as covers need to be continually measured, it makes full use of the cheapest available feed, which is grass.

The company has in place a production cost benchmark of $2.60/kg MS, a cost they have been able to stick to due to their ability to reduce feed costs, so any extra on top of Fonterra’s indicated payouts goes straight into the profit of the business.

Wages are set at a fixed cost of $214/cow, animal health equates to $47/cow, feed costs were set at $400/cow, but Donkers says this will be reduced as the requirement for purchased feed decreases. Fertiliser amounts to $166/cow and irrigation electricity costs 24c/kg MS.

Interestingly wages are a fixed amount, and the company fully expects their staff to look elsewhere for work as their skill sets improve and they look for higher management positions.

Despite their inflexibility around wages, Leo says people are the most important assets in their business and do their best to retain their staff for as long as possible.

Farm manager Terry Kildare is an exception, and in order to retain his skills for the long-term they intend him to take over the operations manager’s role or come to some form of profit share agreement.

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