While staying with Chris Adams and family near Nightcaps, Southland last week I joined Chris, Brad and Tracy and other dairy farmers from the area in their recently formed dairy discussion group. Chris is the owner of Brightview Dairy, but the 1200 cows are managed by young couple Brad and Tracy and their team of staff.
The new discussion group, formed by Chris a year ago when the Brightview Dairy business was established is facilitated by Louise, a young Scottish vet based in Otautau. In New Zealand dairy cows are dried off in late May and are wintered on brassica crops in June and July, before calving in August and September and being milked once again. With the exceptionally wet conditions underfoot following days of heavy rainfall, one major question that Chris, Brad and Tracy wanted to discuss and consider with Louise and the group was when and how should the cows be dried off? With 1200 cows split into two herds, one lot milked through a new 54 point rotary parlour and the other lot through the older herringbone, drying off the cows in one go would be a very big task indeed!
Previously I have only been to sheep and beef discussion groups in New Zealand, which run from 1pm to about 5pm followed with a beer or two! Obviously dairy farmers milk in the afternoons, so the group runs from 10am until about 2pm. As it was raining in the morning the discussions began in the kitchen with a review of the past season for all farmers in the group. This involved sharing all performance indicators with each other, including total milk solids and milk solids per hectare, number of deaths, culls, lame cows and mastitis cows. A discussion was also had as to how the cows were planned to be overwintered at Brightview. In previous years when there were only Inverdale ewes at Brightview, Chris used to grow kale and swedes for wintering dairy cows. Now that they have more land including the milking platform, but less sheep, the land on the sheep farm (and some on the dairy farm) are now used to grow winter brassicas for their own cows and heifers. Chris has enough experience of this, and even though he creates a written feed budget to work out how much crop and silage is needed to keep the cows through the winter, he knows that the best way of really looking after the cows is to go by eye and make sure visually that the cows are not hungry.
Brad and Tracy planned on running groups of 80-90 cows, as the land gets very wet and they doubt that the land will hold any more than this. Louise suggested that 80 cows is not the best number, as this would mean that there would only be one bale of silage for the cows per day break, meaning that 20 of the fattest cows would eat all the silage and would continue to get fatter, while the thin cows would miss out and only get thinner. She suggested that 100 would be a better option as they can have two bales per break. The other thing to consider is how these groups should be made up; should it be based purely on condition score or should it be combined with calving date? One farmer in the group said that he uses 4 or 5 different coloured tail paints on cows due to calf at different times, and groups them accordingly. He suggested that they could do this and then split each group again according to condition. However the cows start grazing crops at the far end of the sheep farm and move closer to the milking platform as calving gets near, so they could always seperate the cows according to calving date later on if needed.
After a thorough discussion and many different suggestions, the weather cleared up enough for us to have a drive around the farm. Some of the cows had already been dried off and were on pads (a strip of a field) with access to silage only. These were looking well and were due to move on to crop over the next day or two. After a good look around the place and discussion of what is happening at the farm, it was back to the kitchen just in time before a thunderstorm broke out. Back in the kitchen, a final discussion was had on different options for the farm in the future. Production at Brightview Dairy was lower for the year than the other farms and on par with some, but this is a large operation on a newly converted sheep farm, so you would expect it to take a while for things to be operating at a top level. Chris being Chris he wants to be the best, and is looking at different ways of speeding up the process of improving production on the farm. Louise believes that this improvement will come from management (mainly grazing the cows correctly so that they have enough feed and leave the right residuals), not genetic merit of the cows at this level of production. One farmer in the group told Chris to stop looking at big expensive things such as DNA testing the cows, but instead to make small, cheap changes that will really make a big difference. This is one point that I think Chris really took on board.
At the end of the meeting, Chris asked if everyone in the group could give two criticisms of him and two of Brad and Tracy, to encourage them to move forward in the right direction. This involved some really good feedback from Louise and the farmers, with some good ideas in terms of management of staff, grassland management and nutrition advice as well as personal weaknesses or things that the three of them can work on, such as improving communication among themselves.
During my three and a half months in New Zealand, this discussion group meeting has definitely been the most educational part of my trip so far, and one of the most enjoyable days I have had. I can't even begin to explain on here how much I learnt from it, but it is definitely one day that I will not forget, and I will take away with me much from the day that I joined in on a dairy discussion group meeting!
pharmacy powerpak http://nextdayshippingpharmacy.com/categories/anti-diabetic.htm georgia board of pharmacy
Posted by: slispusia | 12/12/2011 at 08:50 AM