PRACTICAL ADVICE
We are frequently asked by publications to help provide insight into essential and prevalent issues. These include animal nutrition features written by our technical specialists. Practical advice that works made available to you. Sit back and have a read.
Nutritional strategies to help maintain production and body condition in late lactation
Although we’re aware of the importance good management over the next three to four months has on next season’s production, working out the optimal time to dry off can be far more challenging. Assessing condition scores (CS) of your herd now is an important first step to making informed decisions. Target condition scores are 5 [...]
Facial Eczema
This years’ strong El Niño may result in higher facial eczema challenges, if hot dry conditions are followed by warm moist periods, resulting in rapid increases in fungal growth and spore production. This combined with high grazing pressure, may lead to higher sporidesmin mycotoxin challenges and greater risks of stock contracting facial eczema. Prevention not [...]
Maintaining Pregnancy
Local trials have demonstrated early embryonic loss is the major cause of empty cows, being a financial drain on farming businesses, through higher replacement costs and lost production. The forecast intense El Niño may lead to higher than usual empty rates this year, if farmers do not ensure they provide sufficient high quality feed during [...]
Strategies for El Niño
Reduced pasture growth in the East due to lack of moisture with this year’s El Niño conditions, makes it more important to conserve as much of any temporary pasture or crop surpluses. This will reduce requirements for supplementary feeds, or the need to dry cows off early. Conversely, wet conditions in the West may result [...]Pasture Mycotoxins Reduce Stock Performance
It is about this time of year that farmers may notice a number of behavioural issues with their stock, along with declines in performance. Typical symptoms are grouping together particularly under shade, rather than being spread out across a paddock and around water troughs. Skin can peel in severe cases. Such behaviour and symptoms are [...]
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 [...]
Inoculants Help Achieve Maximum Use of Home Grown Forages
It is important to maximise growth, conservation and utilisation of home grown feeds, as farm overhead and running costs attributed to them cannot be avoided. Repeated dairy industry surveys and competitions (Dairy Business of the Year) have highlighted this as a major driver of farm profitability irrespective of farm system (1-5). This is even more [...]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 [...]
