The phrase milk from forage is, depending on your viewpoint, either greeted with derision or glee. Like it or not, it is the most widely used measure of efficiency in the Northern Ireland dairy industry.

The average, according to benchmarking figures from 2015, is that just 1,686 litres of milk is produced from forage out of a total production of 7,513 litres per cow.

So if just 1,686 litres comes from forage, then the rest must come from concentrates. While grazed grass is a forage, milk from forage does not specifically refer to grazed grass, as forage includes grass silage, maize and wholecrop, so we can assume that a good proportion of the milk from forage comes from non-grazed grass forage.

With this in mind, hearing that the Future Herd at Greenmount is producing 3,870 litres from forage, more than twice the benchmark average, is reason to take note.

Martin Mulholland is the dairy technologist working at Greenmount and is responsible for the management of the herd. He gave an update on herd performance at one of the forum sessions at the Winter Fair last week.

The 150 autumn-calving cows have an average 12-month rolling production figure of 8,894 litres per cow. Cows are fed a total of 2.26t of concentrate per lactation so for every litre of milk produced there was 0.25kg of concentrate fed. Calving interval is 380 days. Milk composition averaged 4.15% butterfat and 3.27% protein which works out at 679kg of milk solids per cow.

The target at Greenmount is to produce 4,000 litres of milk per cow from forage. At 3,870 litres, they are slightly off this target. So how to get there?

Martin said that silage quality has a huge influence over how much milk will be produced from forage this winter. The target is to feed silage that has a D-Value above 72 as this will allow for reduced concentrate feeding. Silage dry matter is analysed weekly at Greenmount, with the ration formulation changed monthly based on the feeding value of the silage.

This year’s first-cut silage had a D-Value of 72 and a dry matter of 31%. This is currently being fed with maize silage in a two-thirds/one-third split being grass and maize silage. Martin says this forage is contributing about eight litres of milk per cow per day.

The other big effect on milk from forage is utilising grass. About 40 stale cows were out grazing in Greenmount as recently as last Wednesday. This is because there was grass available and the ground conditions were favourable. Similarly, if ground conditions are OK and if grass is available next spring then cows will be turned out to utilise this grass.

Targeting concentrate to cows with the highest yield potential is the other area they are looking at in Greenmount. Grouping cows based on the stage of lactation will target concentrate feeding to cows that will produce higher yields.

Cows are fed concentrates on a feed-to-yield basis at a rate of 0.45kg per litre of milk produced above 20 litres. Some of the highest-yielding cows are milking over 55 litres per day.

Breeding

On the winter-milking Dairylink Ireland farms, breeding is now in full swing. Remember the signs of heat – standing to be mounted, attempting to mount other cows, sniffing/soliciting other cows, bellowing, increased activity and a drop in yield. Heat detection aids are being used on most of the Dairylink farms. Bill Brown and Robin Clements use pedometers, Nigel Corbett uses a crayon and visual detection while Kevin McGrade just uses visual detection.

Bill Brown delayed his start of mating to last Saturday and he had 15 cows inseminated by Monday. He delayed the start of mating to make calving more compact. Bill is using a team of five Holstein Friesian bulls this year. The bulls he has chosen are all high-EBI Holstein Friesian with strong emphasis on fertility and increasing fat and protein yield. See Table 1 for the bulls Bill has chosen.