Introduction

Milk prices have fallen by 20 percent over the past few years. The value of cull cows and surplus calves have been substantially reduced. It is clear that in order to maintain or improve profitability from the dairy herd technical efficiency has to improve and costs must be reduced.

Feed represents one of the largest costs and is an obvious cost to be reduced. Concentrates generally represent 20-25 percent of the costs of production, although the cost van be as low as 5-10 percent. We must not forget about overhead costs and other variable costs. Excessive reductions in feed costs may increase vets fees for fertility treatment and increase replacement costs as a result of more barren cows.

Improving the feeding value of grass silage must be a priority. The production of high intake, high digestibility grass silage which is capable of supporting high levels of animal performance will continue to be the cornerstone of winter milk production.

To successfully utilise grass with today's cow the twin objectives of maintaining grass quality and adequately rationing cows to ensure optimum milk production and reproductive performance must be met. Grass must be grazed to a sufficiently low sward height to maintain sward quality at the next grazing but must not be grazed so low as to limit grass intake.

Grass budgeting is a new grassland management technique which can help farmers to balance grass quality and grass intake and thus increase milk production from grass.