The reader loyalty code gives you full access to the site from when you enter it until the following Wednesday at 9pm. Find your unique code on the back page of Irish Country Living every week.
CODE ACCEPTED
You have full access to farmersjournal.ie on this browser until 9pm next Wednesday. Thank you for buying the paper and using the code.
CODE NOT VALID
Please try again or contact us.
For assistance, call 01 4199525
or email subs@farmersjournal.ie
If would like to speak to a member of our team, please call us on 01-4199525
Reset password
Please enter your email address and we will send you a link to reset your password
If would like to speak to a member of our team, please call us on 01-4199525
Link sent to your email address
We have sent an email to your address.
Please click on the link in this email to reset
your password. If you can't find it in your inbox,
please check your spam folder. If you can't
find the email, please call us on 01-4199525.
Email address not recognised
There is no subscription associated with this email
address. To read our subscriber-only content.
please subscribe or use the reader loyalty code.
If would like to speak to a member of our team, please call us on 01-4199525
You have no more free articles this month
We hope you've enjoyed your 6 free articles. To continue reading, sign in to your account, use the code or subscribe for just €1 to get unlimited access for 30 days.
This content is available to digital subscribers and loyalty code users only. Sign in to your account, use the code or subscribe for just €1 to get unlimited access for 30 days.
This content is available to digital subscribers and loyalty code users only. Sign in to your account, use the code or subscribe for just €1 to get unlimited access for 30 days.
Alex Robertson, farm manager at Coopon Carse dairy farm in Scotland, went to Denmark two years ago to learn all about the benefits of compact feeding. He explained the goal is twofold:
1 to mix the feed so completely that sorting is eliminated or at least held to below 2% refusals.
2 To mix the feed well enough that the fibres are physically opened during the high-impact mixing process and mixed enough to eliminate sorting.
When I visited Coopon Carse farm, it is fair to say the cows were still doing some sorting of feed and Alex admitted that yes, that is the case. However, he was clear that there is definitely not the same sorting going on compared with previous TMR-type diets he would have fed.
He suggested in dry fluffy mixes it was much easier for cows to burrow down through feed and sort out the good bits from the rest. He also suggested when the TMR mix is light, cows can push it away from the head and feed much easier. Alex is adding 10kg of water per cow to the forage and blend TMR mix (wheat, beet pulp, etc) which means it is a much heavier, dense mix than some straw-based, lighter TMR mixes.
The aim at Coopon is to have total ration dry matter at 37% to 38% to maximise intakes. Water is as added to the selected feeds in the wagon and then the mix is spilled out on concrete to soak for feed-out the following day. Alex researched tub feeder options that would allow him get a good mix and he chose the US feeder as he explained it allowed for no static feed in the corners of the mixer and it has more upright sides (rather than sloped), allowing the feed move up and down through the feeder quicker.
We saw one feed mix spilled out on the concrete. Alex explained there was 7,400kg of caustic treated wheat, 350kg of ammonia treated straw and water made up to 10.5t in total. Poured out alongside it was another mix of beet pulp and other ingredients soaked in water. Alex estimates cows are eating 23.5kg dry matter per day and since he started the compact feeding Alex claims yield per cow went up two litres per cow overnight.
Since my visit I have queried if there is any independent research completed on this concept and my sources suggest they haven’t seen any direct comparisons published.
Background
Coopon Carse is a very well-known Scottish farm and is owned by billionaire Wijnand Pon of Koepon Holdings, based in Holland. The Koepon group has dairy farms in a number of countries and also owns the private AI company Alta Genetics. However, one of the very first things Alex explained to us when we landed in the yard was this business was not subsidised by other businesses and must stand on its own merit. He said: “This is a commercial farm and we have to make commercial decisions. This farm has changed radically from where it was 20 years ago for commercial reasons.”
The farm is milking three times per day, with cows housed 365 days per year. During the summer, fresh grass is cut and carried into the cows. Alex suggests the zero grazing in summer is saving the business money on purchased concentrate and silage. Staff on the Coopon farm carry out a lot of the machinery work themselves, a key task during the spring and summer (see video).
Labour is key, and Alex has a team of seven staff along with him to manage the 530 milking cows and followers. This year, there are almost as many youngstock as milking cows (more than 500 between weanlings and in-calf heifers). The farm took a decision to retain rather than sell surplus in-calf stock as stock prices were poor.
Some of this year’s replacements were housed on straw beds in plastic tunnels on the farm. Heifers were 250kg plus, very well grown and were being offered straw and a concentrate diet. Alex was hoping to sell some of these heifers, all born from cows yielding over 10,000kg of milk per year for around £500 per heifer this autumn. Alex said: “It costs us about £1,200 to rear a heifer and while milk price was on the floor we were only getting £1,100 each at two years of age so we have more heifers than we want or need at the moment.”
Stock
In terms of stock changes, Alex said: “Back 20 years ago, we had high-yielding cows and calving interval was 430 days. Now we have higher yielding cows (11,000 litres/lactation) and calving interval is 378 days as we attempt to keep cows in higher yields for longer.”
Maiden heifers calve at 24 months of age – all maiden heifers are inseminated with sexed dairy semen. Alex said while conception rate might be slightly reduced he finds sexing reduces mortality rate at calving and is easier on the first-calvers so they get into milk much quicker. Maiden heifers remain indoors all the time until they are bred. Usually it is Alta sexed semen that is used (sires such as Founder and Superstar used recently).
Alex talked about herd fertility for the milking herd and he said the fertility rate was 26%. This figure didn’t make any sense to me so I had to contact Alta to see what the definition was. Alta confirmed to me that the Alta definition of pregnancy rate, devised in the US by Valley Ag software, was to take every cow above the voluntary waiting period of 50 days as being eligible to serve unless she is either pregnant or on the cull list. The pregnancy rate is measured by the percentage of eligible cows served in a given three-week period divided by the number of those cows that got pregnant in that same time scale. Alex confirmed the cull rate for the herd is around 33% and all cows to be bred have the Alta Cow Watch pedometer strapped on legs to ensure they are identified in heat. All heats in advance of breeding start date are monitored using the data collection tool and, if a cow is calved over 50 days with no heat recorded, then she is vet-checked immediately.
On this farm cows are inseminated from day 55 after calving onwards and the vet calls to the farm each Monday morning to check cows in calf. Pretty much all cows were getting injected with GnRH, scanned a week later and perhaps then get a shot prostaglandin. If this didn’t bring them into heat they would get a second shot of prostaglandin. All this means that effectively the only problem cows presented to the vet for checking are totally anoestrous cows. Coopon aims to get 10 cows calving per week. All first-calving heifers and all good cows are bred to dairy but most of the rest are bred to easy-calving Belgian Blue sires.
Calf feeding
Biestings milk is pasteurised on-farm to manage the Johne’s disease threat and calves are fed this milk for the first two feeds before they switch to a mix of whole milk and powder milk. Biestings quality is tested using a refractometer and if it is poor quality it is boosted by including milk replacer powder.
Coopon Carse came across as a farm that is very well managed. It is a very well established business, with Alex Robertson heading up the farm for more than 20 years, giving it great stability. All this doesn’t take away from the intensive routine, high input-output herd, high total costs of production and extreme attention to detail required for such an enterprise.
Herd health
TB test every four years.
Footbath – regularly with Copper Sulphate solution.
Foot trimmer – calls every three weeks to lift about 50 cows and essentially all cows lifted at dry-off and about four months calved.
Decox premedicated powder in calf feed.
400 lux lights used in cow sheds because previously found not enough light and cows were going to sleep too much resulting in yield drop and not enough heat signs on display.
All vaccinated for BVD.
Cows are pre-dipped in iodine and high yielders post dipped with Uddergold.
Slurry separated, dung dried out and used as bedding in the cubicles – 4in angle iron at back of cubicle to keep bedding in place. Bedding cows every three days.
Farm stats
Farming 276ha (680 acres)
Milk produced from farm has increased from 4.8m to 5.6m litres per year.
Lowered calving interval, fewer low yielders and giving six weeks dry is the optimum.
All cows milked three times per day at 5am, 1pm and 9pm.
Cows milked on a 28-unit rotary with one milker on the inside. Another person pushing cows into collecting yard, changing groups and pushing in silage while changing groups. Milking takes about three hours. Rotary installed in the year 2000.
Costs for all feed used is about 12p/litre alone. Milk price in UK dipped to 22 p/litre for last two years.
Current milk yield about 32 litres per cow (x3/day) at 4% fat and 3.45% protein – Alex said milk solids drop to 3.6% fat and 3.1% protein at other times of the year.
Alex Robertson, farm manager at Coopon Carse dairy farm in Scotland, went to Denmark two years ago to learn all about the benefits of compact feeding. He explained the goal is twofold:
1 to mix the feed so completely that sorting is eliminated or at least held to below 2% refusals.
2 To mix the feed well enough that the fibres are physically opened during the high-impact mixing process and mixed enough to eliminate sorting.
When I visited Coopon Carse farm, it is fair to say the cows were still doing some sorting of feed and Alex admitted that yes, that is the case. However, he was clear that there is definitely not the same sorting going on compared with previous TMR-type diets he would have fed.
He suggested in dry fluffy mixes it was much easier for cows to burrow down through feed and sort out the good bits from the rest. He also suggested when the TMR mix is light, cows can push it away from the head and feed much easier. Alex is adding 10kg of water per cow to the forage and blend TMR mix (wheat, beet pulp, etc) which means it is a much heavier, dense mix than some straw-based, lighter TMR mixes.
The aim at Coopon is to have total ration dry matter at 37% to 38% to maximise intakes. Water is as added to the selected feeds in the wagon and then the mix is spilled out on concrete to soak for feed-out the following day. Alex researched tub feeder options that would allow him get a good mix and he chose the US feeder as he explained it allowed for no static feed in the corners of the mixer and it has more upright sides (rather than sloped), allowing the feed move up and down through the feeder quicker.
We saw one feed mix spilled out on the concrete. Alex explained there was 7,400kg of caustic treated wheat, 350kg of ammonia treated straw and water made up to 10.5t in total. Poured out alongside it was another mix of beet pulp and other ingredients soaked in water. Alex estimates cows are eating 23.5kg dry matter per day and since he started the compact feeding Alex claims yield per cow went up two litres per cow overnight.
Since my visit I have queried if there is any independent research completed on this concept and my sources suggest they haven’t seen any direct comparisons published.
Background
Coopon Carse is a very well-known Scottish farm and is owned by billionaire Wijnand Pon of Koepon Holdings, based in Holland. The Koepon group has dairy farms in a number of countries and also owns the private AI company Alta Genetics. However, one of the very first things Alex explained to us when we landed in the yard was this business was not subsidised by other businesses and must stand on its own merit. He said: “This is a commercial farm and we have to make commercial decisions. This farm has changed radically from where it was 20 years ago for commercial reasons.”
The farm is milking three times per day, with cows housed 365 days per year. During the summer, fresh grass is cut and carried into the cows. Alex suggests the zero grazing in summer is saving the business money on purchased concentrate and silage. Staff on the Coopon farm carry out a lot of the machinery work themselves, a key task during the spring and summer (see video).
Labour is key, and Alex has a team of seven staff along with him to manage the 530 milking cows and followers. This year, there are almost as many youngstock as milking cows (more than 500 between weanlings and in-calf heifers). The farm took a decision to retain rather than sell surplus in-calf stock as stock prices were poor.
Some of this year’s replacements were housed on straw beds in plastic tunnels on the farm. Heifers were 250kg plus, very well grown and were being offered straw and a concentrate diet. Alex was hoping to sell some of these heifers, all born from cows yielding over 10,000kg of milk per year for around £500 per heifer this autumn. Alex said: “It costs us about £1,200 to rear a heifer and while milk price was on the floor we were only getting £1,100 each at two years of age so we have more heifers than we want or need at the moment.”
Stock
In terms of stock changes, Alex said: “Back 20 years ago, we had high-yielding cows and calving interval was 430 days. Now we have higher yielding cows (11,000 litres/lactation) and calving interval is 378 days as we attempt to keep cows in higher yields for longer.”
Maiden heifers calve at 24 months of age – all maiden heifers are inseminated with sexed dairy semen. Alex said while conception rate might be slightly reduced he finds sexing reduces mortality rate at calving and is easier on the first-calvers so they get into milk much quicker. Maiden heifers remain indoors all the time until they are bred. Usually it is Alta sexed semen that is used (sires such as Founder and Superstar used recently).
Alex talked about herd fertility for the milking herd and he said the fertility rate was 26%. This figure didn’t make any sense to me so I had to contact Alta to see what the definition was. Alta confirmed to me that the Alta definition of pregnancy rate, devised in the US by Valley Ag software, was to take every cow above the voluntary waiting period of 50 days as being eligible to serve unless she is either pregnant or on the cull list. The pregnancy rate is measured by the percentage of eligible cows served in a given three-week period divided by the number of those cows that got pregnant in that same time scale. Alex confirmed the cull rate for the herd is around 33% and all cows to be bred have the Alta Cow Watch pedometer strapped on legs to ensure they are identified in heat. All heats in advance of breeding start date are monitored using the data collection tool and, if a cow is calved over 50 days with no heat recorded, then she is vet-checked immediately.
On this farm cows are inseminated from day 55 after calving onwards and the vet calls to the farm each Monday morning to check cows in calf. Pretty much all cows were getting injected with GnRH, scanned a week later and perhaps then get a shot prostaglandin. If this didn’t bring them into heat they would get a second shot of prostaglandin. All this means that effectively the only problem cows presented to the vet for checking are totally anoestrous cows. Coopon aims to get 10 cows calving per week. All first-calving heifers and all good cows are bred to dairy but most of the rest are bred to easy-calving Belgian Blue sires.
Calf feeding
Biestings milk is pasteurised on-farm to manage the Johne’s disease threat and calves are fed this milk for the first two feeds before they switch to a mix of whole milk and powder milk. Biestings quality is tested using a refractometer and if it is poor quality it is boosted by including milk replacer powder.
Coopon Carse came across as a farm that is very well managed. It is a very well established business, with Alex Robertson heading up the farm for more than 20 years, giving it great stability. All this doesn’t take away from the intensive routine, high input-output herd, high total costs of production and extreme attention to detail required for such an enterprise.
Herd health
TB test every four years.
Footbath – regularly with Copper Sulphate solution.
Foot trimmer – calls every three weeks to lift about 50 cows and essentially all cows lifted at dry-off and about four months calved.
Decox premedicated powder in calf feed.
400 lux lights used in cow sheds because previously found not enough light and cows were going to sleep too much resulting in yield drop and not enough heat signs on display.
All vaccinated for BVD.
Cows are pre-dipped in iodine and high yielders post dipped with Uddergold.
Slurry separated, dung dried out and used as bedding in the cubicles – 4in angle iron at back of cubicle to keep bedding in place. Bedding cows every three days.
Farm stats
Farming 276ha (680 acres)
Milk produced from farm has increased from 4.8m to 5.6m litres per year.
Lowered calving interval, fewer low yielders and giving six weeks dry is the optimum.
All cows milked three times per day at 5am, 1pm and 9pm.
Cows milked on a 28-unit rotary with one milker on the inside. Another person pushing cows into collecting yard, changing groups and pushing in silage while changing groups. Milking takes about three hours. Rotary installed in the year 2000.
Costs for all feed used is about 12p/litre alone. Milk price in UK dipped to 22 p/litre for last two years.
Current milk yield about 32 litres per cow (x3/day) at 4% fat and 3.45% protein – Alex said milk solids drop to 3.6% fat and 3.1% protein at other times of the year.
This content is available to digital subscribers only. Sign in to your account or subscribe for just €1 to get unlimited access for 30 days.SIGN INSUBSCRIBE FOR €1
This is a subscriber-only article
SHARING OPTIONS: