Your weekly glimpse into research in action at Southern Dairy Hub.
Insights
In-shed supplement and baleage feeding will continue to be offered to counteract lower pasture utilisation due to wet paddock conditions and to protect against sustained BCS loss. Standard cows will be offered 5 kg DM of in-shed feed and 2 kg DM of baleage, fed out in the springer paddocks to protect the milking platform. Future cows will be offered 2 kg DM of in-shed feed and topped up with baleage as required.
The Future herd has just finished the first round, and the Standard herd will finish this week. With 24 hours per paddock, the Future herd is now on a 26-day rotation and the Standard herd on a 25-day rotation, excluding springer paddocks.
Looking at the 10-day weather forecast, we're hoping to get ammonium sulphate on paddocks early next week.
The difference in stocking rate is making a noticeable difference to the feed wedges, amount of pasture available and paddock damage, with the lower-stocked Future herd more settled and doing less damage.
Despite some sustained challenging weather recently, all things considered, we feel we're in a relatively good position due to:
Drying off at our target average pasture covers.
Achieving pre-calving BCS targets and now utilising BCS camera data for strategic in-shed feeding of at-risk cows.
Sticking to the spring rotation planner area allocations, even when conditions got tough.
Weekly farm walks since the beginning of August.
Having a plan and sticking to it has allowed us to do our best under tough conditions.
At last week’s herd test, the Future cows averaged 2.13 kg MS/cow and the Standards 2.10 kg MS/cow.
Herd test results are being used to identify poor-performing cows, mainly heifers, for early culling, along with the five cows that lost their pregnancies during winter.
At our recent metricheck, we treated 6% of the Standard cows tested and 4% of the Future cows.
Rainfall season-to-date is now 150 mm higher than the average of the last six years, with most of the increase occurring in the last 5 weeks.
Farm System Description
Standard herd: average BW Southland herd stocked at 3.2 cows/ha at peak, up to 180 kg N/ha and wintered on swedes & kale
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
If you have any questions about this week's HubWatch, please contact our team.
