Cutting Summer Feed Costs in High Yielding Dairy Herds

This article is one of a series prepared jointly by CAFRE and John Thompson & Sons, focusing on the key grassland management issues facing dairy farmers approaching the start of the 2008 season. The articles draw on experiences from the management of the Future Herd at Greenmount Campus, CAFRE managed in partnership with Thompsons, and the Thompsons Milk Manager data from customer’s dairy herds across N. Ireland.

Supply and demand for feed products across the world has pushed up the cost of concentrate feed to N. Ireland dairy farmers. You can expect typical prices for a good quality 18 percent crude protein concentrate this summer to be around £230 per tonne. This is up by over £60 per tonne compared to 2007 prices.

Milk prices for summer 2008, given auction prices and futures markets can be expected to average about 21 pence. You can therefore expect lower returns from meal feeding this summer.

In recent years, there has been a trend for some dairy farmers to house all cows at night through the grazing season, fed on silage and concentrates. Others have adopted a total confinement system for all milking cows. This is understandable where cow numbers have grown beyond the capacity of the grazing land available. However, on some farms the belief is that cows will perform better housed than at grass. But at what cost?

Technical efficiency in milk production from home grown forage has slipped by over 850 litres per cow over the past eight years as indicated in Table 1.

Table 1. Greenmount Dairy Benchmarking results 1999 to 2007

In the absence of milk quota restrictions, many farmers appear to be pushing milk yields by increasing meal feeding. Is this the right strategy with summer feed costs at over £200 per tonne?

The Thompsons Milk Manager service has results for a number of herds housing all milking cows at night during the 2007 grazing season. Compared with The Greenmount Campus Future Herd, milk yields were 2.4 litres per day higher from April to June than the Future Herd. However, concentrate feeding levels were 4.2 kg per cow per day more as shown in Table 2 below.

Table2. Thompsons Milk Manager and Future Herd Performance April to June 2007

At a base milk price of 21 pence per litre and a feed price of £230 per tonne, the Thompsons Milk Manager herds would have reduced margins of £50 per day or £1500 per month (per 100 cows), compared to the Future Herd. However, at average herd yields of over 30 litres and with a spread calving pattern, there will be fresh calved cows yielding over 40 litres. But there will also be late lactation cows down to 20 litres and below. How can you save feed costs, maintain fertility and maintain milk yields?

Routine buffer feeding of all milking cows, irrespective of yield, wastes feed on low yielding cows. It also makes grazing management more difficult. Cows turned out to graze full of silage and meal only want to lie down and cud!

You can feed high yielding cows up to 10 kg of concentrates through the parlour at two milkings. Combined with good grazing management under reasonable conditions, this is sufficient for 40 litres of milk production. Your high yielding cows may be more sensitive to poor weather conditions, or drops in grass intake when they have to graze heavy grass covers. Under these circumstances, you can use buffer feeding sparingly in smaller herds of less than 100 cows.

In large herds of 150 cows or more, a viable management option may be to batch the herd into two groups based on milk yield and calving dates. An example split might be over 35 litres and less than 3 months calved. You can house the smaller group of fresh calved, high yielding cows full time and feed these cows a total mixed ration. Graze the remainder of the herd full time. This option is most relevant to herds with a limited grazing area close to the milking parlour.

The lowest yielding grazed cows only need their magnesium intake either maintained through magnesium in the water, or fed a small quantity of high magnesium concentrates. You can feed grazed cows yielding over 25 litres under good grazing conditions in May to yield using parlour feeders.