Your weekly glimpse into research in action at Southern Dairy Hub.
Insights
Looking at consolidating the remaining dry cows into one mob with just under 100 to calve.
This week we started feeding baleage to Standard mobs to hold spring rotation plan and meet cow demands but will monitor requirement daily and remove if not being utilised. It is a balance at the moment with the wetter conditions.
Baleage quality is always a focus for the Hub and there has been a range this week fed out. We will implement another marking system to our current system this year to make it easier to know the 'milking quality' baleage.
Will utilise BCS camera data fortnightly to identify any lighter BCS cows that may need further action (priority feeding). We are only manually undertaking BCS monthly now rather than the traditional two weekly score (utilising the technology more).
We visited the grazier this week when animals were in the yards for pre-mating bloods as we prepare them for mating late October. We plan to AB our heifers this year to further drive genetic gain.
We move our focus to mating and are scheduling the vets for the first round of metrichecking of all cows calved more than 42 days next week.
Standard herd
Average BW Southland herd stocked at 3.2 cows/ha at peak, up to 180 kg N/ha and wintered on swedes.
Future herd
Higher genetic merit herd (127 BW difference) stocked at 2.5 cows/ha at peak, up to 180 kg N/ha and wintered on baleage.
