Chief Executive of Dairy Holdings Colin Glass made his third presentation and concluded on the Dairy Holdings farm he saw no correlation between using extra feed and profit. Colin listed the key drivers that maximise grass utilisation on farms in New Zealand:

• Soil fertility – front loaded on all farms.

• Comparative stocking rate – utilisation up as SR up – not necessarily profit – there’s a sweet spot but we made a call to stock farms aggressively.

• Grazing residuals in spring NB

• Spring rotation planner should be the bible

• Keep checking in on covers through the Spring

• Tight calving spreads are key

• Non ICR – consistently under 9%

Colin said, “We ensure all farms can see how each are performing and this is a sort of peer pressure on each farm. We use the weekly measurement to drive regressing and weekly management.

Moorepark Researcher Brendan Horan also discussed feeding more grass for increased stocking rates and he said farmers need to make choices every day so all these should be stress tested with the farms overall plan. He said, “The Irish data we have shows those farmers that feed more usually graze less and make less profit.”

Read more:

IDB warns of milk price weakness

De-risking the dairy business amid expansion

Grass key to dairy enterprises