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There was a strong focus on winter milk systems on the day. Sean is the chair of Arrabawn Co-op and recently particpated in DairyDay at Punchestown, with the rest of the co-op chairs.
There were four speakers at Arrabawn Milk for Profit: co-ordinator Ruairi McDonnell, Pat Clarke, Tom Murphy and Brian Garry, all from Teagasc.
Ruairi outlined some options for farmers facing a fodder shortage. The first step, he said, is to quantify any potential shortfall.
For silage pits, he advised to multiply the length x width x height in feet and divide by 50 to calculate the tonnes of fresh silage in the pit. Add any bales (average 0.65 t fresh silage per bale).
Cows require 1.6 t/month of fresh silage, a one to two year old will eat 1.3 t/month and zero to one year old will require 0.7 t/month. If a shortage of fodder is identified, options include selling cull cows and store cattle, or buying in extra fodder.
Poor quality bales
Ruairi said: “Caution should be exercised if buying bales, which are highly likely to be poor quality and overpriced.
“It’s usually more economical to actually buy extra meal, unless the bales are very high quality. One kilogramme of meal will replace about 5-7kg of fresh silage. Remember, a dry cow will eat about 11kg DM/day and it’s important that a minimum of 6kg DM is in the form of forage.”
Ruairi mentioned that early nitrogen or reducing stock numbers make great sense if fodder is short and options to purchase are limited.
Sean Monahan had some very good-quality silage (cut 9 May and was 75 DMD) for freshly calved cows.
Sean has a liquid milk contract with Arrabawn and calves about 30 cows in the autumn.
Teagasc’s Tom Murphy said if you can’t make good-quality silage, then producing milk during the winter can be very marginal in terms of profit.
Sean Monahan has a good number of days away from the farm in his role as co-op chair, so he uses paid labour and contractors a lot.
Ruairi said Sean had good farmyard facilities, which reduced labour required.
On the day, Sean said: “Remember, contractor costs are 100% tax deductible, so often it can be not as expensive to use contractors as it seems.”
Herd EBI
Sean hasn’t been focussing on EBI as a selection tool up to now and has been more focussed on AAA breeding.
Teagasc’s Pat Clarke presented a board on the optimum cow type. Essentially, Pat’s message was higher EBI cows have much better milk quality and he showed this with an exercise on Sean’s herd.
He carried out an exercise where Sean’s herd was individually ranked and divided into four quartiles, based on their overall Economic Breeding Index (EBI).
The highest quartile of cows for EBI had the highest milk & fertility indexes and the highest Predicted Difference (PD) for milk protein.
This translated into an average yield per day across the full year of 1.29kg/cow of MS for the highest quartile, compared with 1.2kg, 1.18kg and 1.17kg MS/day for the second, third and fourth quartiles respectively.
When comparing and calculating based on the same milk price for a typical 100-cow herd, there is almost a €20,000 difference in profit between the best cows and the worst cows, or €200/cow/lactation, for Sean’s herd.
Feeding in the freezing cold and frost
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