Your weekly glimpse into research in action at Southern Dairy Hub.
Insights
The spring rotation plan had us finishing the first round 24 September for the standard herd and 21 September for the future herd. With higher covers going into spring and better utilisation of pasture we will finish our first round 5 days after the planned dates. The focus now is managing second round quality as we head into mating. We look forward to hosting Charlotte Westwood and Leo Pekar at our Farm Tour on the 8th of October as this is our topic. Meeting with them both yesterday I know there will be take home messages for all that attend our day on farm.
We have taken pasture samples this week from 9 paddocks at the top of the feed wedge and will share this information as part of our field day in early Oct. It will be interesting to see the variability across these paddocks and how good they are given they length of time they have not been grazed (autumn saved paddocks).
As we extend the area allocated to the cows through the spring rotation plan and with good covers we will reduce the inshed feed for the Future herd this week to 1kg per cow per day. We need to feed 1kg per day as this contains the Vitalise mix blend used giving them their exact dose of calcium, magnesium and essential minerals post calving leading to mating.
The first lot of calves will head out of the sheds this week. They are certainly ready to start extending their legs.
We have our first herd test this week. We are really looking forward to this data to see how the individual cows are performing and also ensuring cows are producing where we would expect them to relative to their age group.
We completed our first metricheck this week and will continue to do this on a fortnightly basis. We also took bloods and liver samples from the cows to ensure cows are set well for the upcoming mating period.
The AB heifer synchrony mating plan is booked for October (CIDR). This is the first time the hub has mated their heifers. This will give us the opportunity to put more selection pressure on the cows helping accelerate their genetic gain.
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.
