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Capital expenditure has been targeted to areas of John Oliver’s farm which will deliver a quick return on investment. Substituting bought-in feed with grazed grass is a key area where he sees an opportunity for a high rate of return.
To do this, John has been investing in grazing infrastructure on his farm near Limavady by constructing laneways, erecting fences, laying waterpipes and installing extra water troughs.
Capital expenditure came to over £20,000 on his farm last year and was funded from cashflow.
In 2018, the 85-cow autumn-calving herd averaged 6,843l from 2.36t of concentrate. The aim on the Oliver farm over the next three years of the Dairylink Ireland programme is to maintain average milk yield at around 7,000l and reduce concentrate feed rate to under 2t, with the current target being 1.85t.
During a Dairylink farm walk on Tuesday, John told visitors that he wants to deliver reduced concentrate feeding by getting an extra month of grazing in the spring and another extra month in the autumn.
He has managed that this year to date as cows were turned out on 18 February and, although re-housed when conditions were wet, they had two weeks grazing by day and another two weeks of grazing by both day and night.
The plan is to also get an extra few weeks in the autumn with the better grazing infrastructure now in place.
John’s farm was only converted from sucklers four years ago, so developing the milking platform has been a gradual process with some stretches of temporary, low-cost laneways made from woodchip put in initially.
The aim of reducing concentrate feeding by 0.5t/head could represent a substantial saving to John of over £10,000/year, which will allow a quick rate of return on the new investments.
Management
Asides from capital expenditure, John has taken other steps to get more days at grass. For example, the start of calving has been brought forward by almost a month to 18 August to allow more freshly calved cows to get to grass for a few weeks in the autumn.
He has also had to be well disciplined with not grazing the milking platform over the winter with his 100 Blackface ewes which are used mainly to graze owned mountain ground. This allowed John to have adequate covers to turn cows out to once conditions allowed this spring.
Sceptics may say that the plan to reduce concentrate feeding looks good on paper but is ultimately weather-dependent. That is true to an extent as John admits that in a wet year, such as 2017, his grazing season might not start until May and could be over by the end of August.
However, if he didn’t have the laneways in place and adequate grass covers on the grazing block, then there would definitely be no extra grazing, regardless of conditions being dry or wet.
John told visitors to his farm that spending money on building a new slurry tank and new cubicle house to keep extra cows would have a payback of seven to 10 years, compared to two to three years for developing infrastructure on the milking platform to reduce production costs.
There are 28 replacement calves on the ground this year
The other opportunity for substituting bought-in feed with grazed grass on the Oliver farm is with heifer-rearing. At the farm walk on Tuesday, John said that total concentrate feeding with heifers from birth to breeding amounted to around 1.5t/head in the past.
There are 28 replacement calves on the ground this year. They were born between 27 August and 6 December and are a fairly uniform group. John front-loaded meal to calves over the winter and they have consumed 0.5t/head so far.
Calves went to grass in mid-February and were around 20kg heavier due to the extra feeding early on. They were then taken off meal and are on grass only. The heifers were weighed three weeks ago and averaged 219kg, so a daily liveweight gain of 0.5kg is needed to hit liveweight target of 350kg at breeding.
John’s farm was mapped, and every paddock was individually soil-sampled over the winter
“I am certain you will be able to achieve 0.5kg per day without feeding any more meal to these calves,” Dairylink adviser Conail Keown said on Tuesday.
At the farm walk, Conail raised the point that reduced concentrate feeding needs to be replaced with extra grass grown on the farm which will require deficiencies in soil fertility to be addressed.
John’s farm was mapped, and every paddock was individually soil-sampled over the winter. The results showed that 70% of the farm has a soil pH below 6.1, 39% is deficient in phosphorous and 11% is low in potash.
The plan is to get lime spread on all low-pH ground after grazing over the next few months. Conail said that increasing pH is the lowest-cost soil fertility issue to rectify and will allow a better response to fertiliser and improved grass growth.
The most recent grass measuring on the Oliver farm had growth at 15kgDM/ha/day and average farm cover was 750kgDM/ha (available).
Only 30 units of nitrogen has been spread so far this season, which is well short of Conail’s target for programme farmers of 70 units by mid-April.
John held off on spreading fertiliser because there was surplus grass earlier in the spring, but this has now hit growth and there is a slight deficit. He is planning to bridge this by grazing silage ground for three or four days and get fertiliser out across the grazing platform this week.
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