What they DON'T tell you about ZERO GRAZING

if you're a farmer take the advice from a farmer to a farmer and see how that runs for you I'm not asking you to invest any more money but I am asking you to invest in your her of cows it's not spending money it's [Music] [Applause] [Music] investing today I wanted to bring you to our own unit here we're looking at the 22nd of February and I suppose grass is in sight really for us here on this Farm in about two to three weeks and most of the spring cing farms uh that may well be getting there a little sooner I wanted to chat to people in relation to what we're doing for our winter ration and to try and bring the importance of that balance and those intakes into what we should be doing over the next 150 days if you look at this we have we have a TMR a total mixed ration and in this and based on the work of our nutritionist and advisors we have the three kilos of of maze wheat barley the soy bean the fbe there's maze silage and there's grass silage and the amount of time that was was taken to balance up this with several things in mind one that it has full nutrient value to supply to the cow to give us the output from the cow and protect the body condition as we're going along we look at it I think the critical thing here is that the feed is available it's available for her every time she comes out there to take it in and that it's well balanced and the guys that put this together spend a lot of time looking at protein energy all of that in 3 weeks time we're going to be bringing in grass here on this farm and we've traditionally been zero grazing now for over 10 years and we can measure the intakes very very simply because we put the grass here and if it's getting scarce we need to get more I look at the spring cing traditional Dairy system where the cows go out onto the paddocks and the Graze out there and I suppose in the earlier paddocks we're trying to get a measure a cover of whatever whatever the the farmer sees fit for his cow type and then start rotation and be able to fulfill the need of the cow right along for whatever period of time I suppose I always look at this time of the year with a word of warning in the sense that if your grass paddocks aren't thick enough you may well be bringing your cows uh body condition down you may be reducing your milk so from a from a a grass point of view we recommend to our to our users number one and even to guys that are not our users guys to go out and maybe bring in some grass by way of a contractor you don't need to own a zero Grazer to zero graze and zero grazing is not about having cows inside cows are inside here because the bulk of our land is away from The Parlor and I probably believe if we had enough land around the place we would still zero graze because an integral part of what we do but would combine it with some grazing we've seen over the years one of the major major pitfalls that we all fall into or that the bulk of the spring cing falls falls into is high quality cows not going in calf and when you're spring cing you have a limited period of time otherwise no matter what happens she falls outside of that and in the following year her lactation is going to be too short so she's losing your money what we say to people is when you go out on your Paddock for your Force grazing that for first grazing if the covers are right is possibly the only grazing that you will get that dry matter from for for that period because those cows going out particularly this time of the year they'll be they'll they'll hoof Mark us they'll defecate us they'll pay on us so come three weeks time even with good growth if there's better growth you'll probably go out in 17 or 18 days if there's poor growth you might be a 21 one days but for sure the same grass is not available because of what she's done in the previous grazing and when you get to the third grazing actually the same applies now if you want to you can maybe Primo or you can top but it's not a traditional practice on a very very busy spring cing Farm what we're saying to people to maintain that intake you need to bring in four or five kilos of dry matter of grass on a daily basis and I'll get in in a moment to the cost implications of not doing that but if you bring in four or five kilos of grass whether to take in 10 kilos of dry matter or 15 kilos of dry matter on the padd up becomes irrelevant if you're supplying the top up after the milking or after an evening or morning milking where they can make that readily available to themselves so what you're allowing them to do is to have consistent high dry matter intakes from grass the benefit of that or the downside of not doing that and I've seen it on the number of herds this year one herd in particular I projected from uh Progressive genetics milk recording that a pict 33 cows based on their milk yield their age their body condition that I felt would have less of a chance going in calf and 30 of those cows showed not in calf now there were probably a, liters ahead of the her average but they were his best genetics the reason they didn't go in calf is very simple they weren't getting enough dry matter in to maintain body condition and to the level that they were doing anyway so what happened there was they possibly came in heat possibly went in cap but probably reabsorb maybe six weeks later and kick themselves out of the system the sad part of this but also the most expensive part of this is that those cows ultimately sold for €700 EUR per head so the top milking cows in the herd were now going out the door at 700 to replace those cows there was heers coming in and those heers and we all know the cost of bringing a heer into a herd could be anywhere from 13 to, 1500 euro per head so if you look if you analyze that you now have brought in a a heer for 14 or500 and sold a cow for seven so your net cost is 700 per head and on that herd there was 30 of those cows that was € 21,000 but the real cost has yet to come your heer will generally produce 1,500 lers less than what that cow as a mature cow was producing before she exited so you could look at easily another 700 uh Euro of a cost for losing that cow and these these losses are outside of your normal cool rate for lame cows and older cows and cows with issues these are outside of that but where I find that it really kills you is the 30 cows you got rid of were your best Hy cows and with sex seman they would probably have produced the next 30 real key heers to build that her this really happened because the intake of the cow wasn't adequate to sustain her body condition to keep her pregnant or to make her pregnant and to allow that this is a major major cost and we see it on Farm every single year on Spring cing heard around the country bad weather can compound it wet weather can compound it because if you get wet weather grazing out paddocks is more difficulty and I know it's a change of mindset but if you can convince yourself to bring in five kilos of dry matter for the first50 days of lactation you're not just attending to the needs of the 30y that you might have CED or the percentage you might have CED you're actually attending to the needs of the entire herd of cows you're really encouraging two to three kilos of additional dry matter intake and you will see that in milk protein you will see that in milk output and you will see that in concentrate savings so what I'm saying to you as a customer as a potential customer as someone else's customer to have a look at the real costs involved in there and be able to deal with that if you have a 100 cows or 150 cows you're looking at an investment of 150 loads of grass to get you safe back in Cal but you'll also see higher submission rates higher conception to first service and a much more content animal daring today and we all know it we get a price for our milk it's set for us we'll get a text message it's up a cent per liter and we're ecstatic but if you look 30 cows and that cost has been 1,400 per per cow is 42,000 if you lose that a cent per liter will never compensate you for the difference so you have to look at how you bring in that grass your cost of 150 loads in it might be 15,000 for a contractor but it's not 15,000 spent it's 15,000 invested so please look at that our Outlook into the dairy farming the whole industry at the moment you're given a price you have to take it the challenge you have is how you deal with the cost of production and if you can take your C cows down if you can take yourself up a lader or two if you can take yourself up a scent or two with additional protein it's about not writing checks for somebody else so I'm not saying to you buffer feed by getting the feed man in another bin full of stuff and another two kilos per cow I'm saying continue what you're doing but buffer feed with grass and tell me if there's no difference by phone by email but I believe it'll revolutionize most Farms within this country [Music] oh

Channel: Grass Technology Ltd

Views: 31,404

Keywords: grass technology, farmer, farmflix, grassmen, grass men, tom Pemberton, farmer Phil, father Phil, John downey, diet feeder, cows, grass to milk, grasstomilk, zero grazer, zero grazing, Jim barron, grass diet, robots, grass tech, dairy, cattle Zero grazing, Beef farming, Dairy industry, Agricultural innovation, Grass Technology Ltd, Farming practices, Productivity, Efficiency, Sustainable farming, Livestock management, Modern farming techniques, Agricultural technology

Id: sDuBJ4j89ps

Length: 12min 51sec (771 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 29 2024