Dairy
Feeding & Fertility
Many dairy farmers have adopted an aggressive culling policy due to the low milk payment forecasts, to enable better feeding of home grown forages to remaining cows, and to reduce requirements for purchased feeds. This has reduced the size of their breeding herds, making it more important that remaining cows become, and stay pregnant to [...]
Nutrition & Feeding Strategies at Low Milk Prices
Farmers are faced with some difficult financial and management decisions during low milk price cycles; one option being to cut costs, particularly inputs. This may help achieve a short term goal of balancing cash flow, but may adversely affect production and profitability later on. One needs to be careful with cutting inputs that directly affect [...]
ME Best Predictor of Feed Value?
Feeds for dairy cows are often valued according to their price per megajoule (MJ) of Metabolisable Energy (ME), as energy intake is usually limiting with cows during early lactation. ME is a measure of the energy available to cows, after losses from undigested feed, urine and methane are accounted for. ME has some limitations as [...]
Importance of Good Transition
It is important to include fixed (land, interest) and variable (seed, fertiliser, sprays) costs in growing and harvesting pasture or crops to properly evaluate cost benefits of using inoculants when preserving forages. Effective lactic acid producing inoculants have been demonstrated, in controlled trials, to reduce dry matter losses by 5->10%, under good ensiling conditions. Inoculant [...]
100 Years Progress in Dairy Cow Production and Feeding
There has been considerable change and progress in cow production and feeding over the last 100 years from 1915, which was also when The Danish Mineral Company formed (now Nutritech International Ltd). There were about 1.1 million people, 634,000 milking or dry dairy cows, 270 butter and 355 cheese factories, producing 31,330 t butter and [...]Poor Summer Performance
About this time of year farmers may notice a number of behavioural issues with their stock, along with declines in performance. Typical symptoms are grouping together particularly where shade is available, and around water troughs, or an increase in temperamental cows that kick off cups during milking. Peeling skin can occur in severe cases. Such [...]
Strategies for a Lower Payout
Financial cycles are a normal part of agriculture, subject to international factors beyond farmers’ control. Farmers need sound business strategies to deal with these fluctuations, to ensure their long term future. Large companies used to such cycles, tend to build up equity during positive cycles, and reduce it during negative ones. Released equity is used [...]Types of Protected Fats
High energy levels in fats make them useful for boosting energy intakes of cows, to increase production, improve fertility or condition at key times during the year. Unsaturated fats can be toxic to rumen microbes at high concentrations, so may adversely affect fibre degradation. Therefore, supplementary fats must be “protected” from rumen activity if they [...]
