The Johnstown winter milk herd is looking at a feeding system trial researching the profitability of different feeding systems for winter milk in the coming years. The herd is split 60/40 autumn/spring-calving. Calving started on 15 September, with 24% already calved and 70% expected to calve in the next six weeks. The spring calving season is 10 weeks, starting in the first week of February until mid-April. There are no May calvers and all spring-calving cows will be dry by 20 December.
Freshly calved cows are started on a diet of grass, plus 2kg concentrate. Teagasc winter milk specialist Joe Patton said the Johnstown team try to keep buffer-fed forage out of the system as long as possible, usually into the third week of October. Cows are put on their treatment allocation of concentrate around four or five days after calving.
The trial is looking at feeding concentrate to individual yield versus flat-rate feeding for a split-calving system. Why? On many commercial herds, significant overfeeding of concentrate, particularly to late lactation cows and/or lower yielders, adds significantly to the annual feed cost.
Also, many herds tend to allocate concentrate towards the higher-than-average yielding cows in the herd, potentially overfeeding the lower yielders. These problems are most likely to arise in herds with spread-out calving patterns and long calving intervals, and also on farms targeting higher volume per cow. The Johnstown team wanted to see if targeting meal would make a difference to the overall efficiency of concentrate use.
Herds on trial
There are two herds of 60 cows each on the trial. The aim for both herds is to maximise the amount of milk produced from grass and high-quality silage. To do this, the three grazing technologies of the spring rotation plan, mid-season grass wedge and autumn budget are applied to manage grass allowance and quality, while high-DMD May silage is targeted. Differences in concentrate feeding strategy for the experiment groups are applied within this structure. These treatment differences are:
Flat rate: Maximise intake of high-quality forage and offer concentrate to balance the nutrient requirements of the group average. Spring and autumn cows essentially treated the same on a given day.Feed to yield: Maximise intake of high-quality forage and then offer concentrate to balance the nutrient requirements of the individual cow. This involves assuming a level of production (plus maintenance) supported by the basic forage diet and then supplementing at a rate of typically 0.5kg concentrate per litre above the base. The meal feeding for individual cows is decided by that cow’s own seven-day rolling average yield.Both groups run at a grazing stocking rate of 3.1LU/ha, which creates a forage deficit for winter feed. Maize silage is purchased on contract from a tillage farm to fill this gap. Maize typically makes up 35% to 40% of the forage in the winter milking diet, or 5kg DM per cow per day. Maize in the diet of spring-calving cows is limited to a couple of weeks in February/March and November. High-quality grass silage bales are used to balance grass deficits mid-season.
Winter feeding plan
The aim is to simplify winter feeding by using a minimum number of high-quality ingredients to achieve the target quality for the overall diet. The basic winter diet is a 60:40 forage mix of grass silage/maize silage fed to refusals of 5%, 2.5kg of a coarse blend (barley, soya hulls, distillers and soya) fed at the barrier and a high-UFL nut in the parlour.
Flat-rate meal: For the flat-rate feeding group in winter, cows are offered a 5kg of concentrate/day in the parlour.Feed to yield meal: On the other hand, the feed to yield group get the base diet plus 1kg parlour nut, but then 0.5kg of meal per litre above 22 litres per day based on a seven-day rolling average. The typical range in parlour feeding on a given day for this group is 2kg for lower yielding heifers to 10kg of meal for a few cows yielding at least 42 litres.Joe said that at Johnstown they are often asked by visiting groups if they should feed more meal outside the parlour and top up the high yielders? Any difference we are seeing with the feed to yield system is coming from saving meal on the low yielders.
By feeding a high level in the wagon, they are missing out on that potential saving. The base feed outside should be set to around the average of the lowest 20% on the herd and the remainder of meal fed in the parlour. That way, only the higher yielding cows receive additional feeding. This would be especially important if you had a mix of fresh and stale cows in the group, but keeping a compact spring-calving herd and less than 5% carryovers means the number of stale cows in milk through the winter is small. This reduces the potential difference between groups.
Over the last three winters, the typical difference between groups is around 0.5kg less meal for the feed-to-yield group for the same yield (29 litres average). Once we bring grass into the system in February, when the value of the forage diet rises, differences in feeding levels become smaller. Joe said that if they did the comparison for a full indoor system, the results might differ, but getting more days at grass for autumn calvers reduces the scale of difference between groups.
Another question they are asked is with so much meal being fed in the parlour, is there a danger of digestive problems? Should they not be feeding straw to compensate?
Joe said there are a couple of important points on this issue: first, they rely on high-quality silage to give the stock adequate fibre intake. The benefit of good silage is that it gives you high forage dry matter intakes (13.5kg to 14kg is typical). At this level of forage, we can feed up to 10kg meal to high yielders and still have less than 50% of the diet as concentrate.
Of course, the high level of feeding only applies to approximately 10% of the herd anyway, and these are the high yielders with big forage intakes. They also include fibre sources like beet pulp and keep the cereal level of 30% to reduce risk. Looking at the fibre content of the total diet with good silage, there is plenty of fibre and we have seen that adding straw is just diluting the quality of the diet. You will not get the intake on poor-quality silage, so the risk of digestive upsets is higher. The answer to the fibre question is to make better silage.
Early trends show some evidence of a meal saving on low yielders indoors, but the annual effect is reduced by having more days at grass. Block calving, fewer carryovers and late spring cows probably reduce the effect of the targeted feeding system. Some evidence suggests that higher yielding spring cows ‘‘demand’’ more concentrate but Joe said they need to run this over another season. The high EBI (€160) genotype is delivering decent yield in a winter context, across either feeding system.
The Johnstown winter diet is balanced for energy and protein at the equivalent of 15.5% crude protein in the total diet. This reduces the requirement for expansive purchased protein supplements, and helps to maintain body condition on silage diets where UFL intake can be limiting. With a total DM intake of around 21kg, 13kg to 14kg comes from forage and 7kg to 8kg from concentrate. The total fibre content of 32% to 35% NDF, with 75% of this coming from forage, should be the target with a starch and sugar total of 16% to 18%.
Value of autumn grass
The Johnstown team are keen to stress that improving grazing management is a real avenue to reduced annual feed cost for winter milk producers. One of the key outcomes from the work in Johnstown to date has been the tailoring of autumn grass budgets for winter milk herds.
The standard autumn grass budget of building to 1,200kg DM/ha for spring herds simply doesn’t work with large numbers of fresh calvers in autumn. Instead, they target a peak cover of around 850kg to 900kg DM/ha in late September, to make sure that cows are grazing covers of 1,600kg to 1,800kg DM/ha at most during October.
Joe said: “This means we have to take out more bales later into August to keep the farm under control, especially when we have cows drying off. It was very difficult this year with high growth rates, but we have built a good stock of surplus bales. The trade-off here is that we run out of grass in early November (not a major issue as we are happy to house fresh calvers by then anyway. We start the last round on 5 October (like a spring herd would do) and close it out in 35 days. The upshot is a high average closing cover of 650kg/ha and more grass in spring.”
First-cut silage was harvested in good conditions on 18 May. The test result is 76 DMD at 24% DM and crude protein of 14.2%, which is a good foundation for the winter diet. Second-cut was taken on 11 July with similar quality but the dry matter was 28%.
The Teagasc winter milk conference, kindly sponsored by AIB, will be held in the Ferrycarrig Hotel, Wexford, on Wednesday 1 October.
The morning session will look at the potential direction for winter milk herds in a post-quota environment. Two dairy farmers, Larry Hannon from Kildare and Glenn Forde from Cork, will give their insight and opinion on the likely effects for their farms. Private consultant Cathal McAleer will give a perspective on what has happened to dairy farm feed systems in the effective quota-free environment in Northern Ireland, and look at the lessons for ROI producers. Joe Patton will look at costs and profits for expansion and other post-quota options for a typical liquid milk herd, with an emphasis on growing margins for the farmer.
The afternoon is a practical session, covering feeding issues for the coming winter and an update on the herd performance (Aidan Lawless), preventing lameness across the year (Ger Cusack XLVets), the labour implications with herd expansion (Pat Clarke) and fertilizer planning for better forages (David Wall, Johnstown).
The Johnstown winter milk herd is looking at a feeding system trial researching the profitability of different feeding systems for winter milk in the coming years. The herd is split 60/40 autumn/spring-calving. Calving started on 15 September, with 24% already calved and 70% expected to calve in the next six weeks. The spring calving season is 10 weeks, starting in the first week of February until mid-April. There are no May calvers and all spring-calving cows will be dry by 20 December.
Freshly calved cows are started on a diet of grass, plus 2kg concentrate. Teagasc winter milk specialist Joe Patton said the Johnstown team try to keep buffer-fed forage out of the system as long as possible, usually into the third week of October. Cows are put on their treatment allocation of concentrate around four or five days after calving.
The trial is looking at feeding concentrate to individual yield versus flat-rate feeding for a split-calving system. Why? On many commercial herds, significant overfeeding of concentrate, particularly to late lactation cows and/or lower yielders, adds significantly to the annual feed cost.
Also, many herds tend to allocate concentrate towards the higher-than-average yielding cows in the herd, potentially overfeeding the lower yielders. These problems are most likely to arise in herds with spread-out calving patterns and long calving intervals, and also on farms targeting higher volume per cow. The Johnstown team wanted to see if targeting meal would make a difference to the overall efficiency of concentrate use.
Herds on trial
There are two herds of 60 cows each on the trial. The aim for both herds is to maximise the amount of milk produced from grass and high-quality silage. To do this, the three grazing technologies of the spring rotation plan, mid-season grass wedge and autumn budget are applied to manage grass allowance and quality, while high-DMD May silage is targeted. Differences in concentrate feeding strategy for the experiment groups are applied within this structure. These treatment differences are:
Flat rate: Maximise intake of high-quality forage and offer concentrate to balance the nutrient requirements of the group average. Spring and autumn cows essentially treated the same on a given day.Feed to yield: Maximise intake of high-quality forage and then offer concentrate to balance the nutrient requirements of the individual cow. This involves assuming a level of production (plus maintenance) supported by the basic forage diet and then supplementing at a rate of typically 0.5kg concentrate per litre above the base. The meal feeding for individual cows is decided by that cow’s own seven-day rolling average yield.Both groups run at a grazing stocking rate of 3.1LU/ha, which creates a forage deficit for winter feed. Maize silage is purchased on contract from a tillage farm to fill this gap. Maize typically makes up 35% to 40% of the forage in the winter milking diet, or 5kg DM per cow per day. Maize in the diet of spring-calving cows is limited to a couple of weeks in February/March and November. High-quality grass silage bales are used to balance grass deficits mid-season.
Winter feeding plan
The aim is to simplify winter feeding by using a minimum number of high-quality ingredients to achieve the target quality for the overall diet. The basic winter diet is a 60:40 forage mix of grass silage/maize silage fed to refusals of 5%, 2.5kg of a coarse blend (barley, soya hulls, distillers and soya) fed at the barrier and a high-UFL nut in the parlour.
Flat-rate meal: For the flat-rate feeding group in winter, cows are offered a 5kg of concentrate/day in the parlour.Feed to yield meal: On the other hand, the feed to yield group get the base diet plus 1kg parlour nut, but then 0.5kg of meal per litre above 22 litres per day based on a seven-day rolling average. The typical range in parlour feeding on a given day for this group is 2kg for lower yielding heifers to 10kg of meal for a few cows yielding at least 42 litres.Joe said that at Johnstown they are often asked by visiting groups if they should feed more meal outside the parlour and top up the high yielders? Any difference we are seeing with the feed to yield system is coming from saving meal on the low yielders.
By feeding a high level in the wagon, they are missing out on that potential saving. The base feed outside should be set to around the average of the lowest 20% on the herd and the remainder of meal fed in the parlour. That way, only the higher yielding cows receive additional feeding. This would be especially important if you had a mix of fresh and stale cows in the group, but keeping a compact spring-calving herd and less than 5% carryovers means the number of stale cows in milk through the winter is small. This reduces the potential difference between groups.
Over the last three winters, the typical difference between groups is around 0.5kg less meal for the feed-to-yield group for the same yield (29 litres average). Once we bring grass into the system in February, when the value of the forage diet rises, differences in feeding levels become smaller. Joe said that if they did the comparison for a full indoor system, the results might differ, but getting more days at grass for autumn calvers reduces the scale of difference between groups.
Another question they are asked is with so much meal being fed in the parlour, is there a danger of digestive problems? Should they not be feeding straw to compensate?
Joe said there are a couple of important points on this issue: first, they rely on high-quality silage to give the stock adequate fibre intake. The benefit of good silage is that it gives you high forage dry matter intakes (13.5kg to 14kg is typical). At this level of forage, we can feed up to 10kg meal to high yielders and still have less than 50% of the diet as concentrate.
Of course, the high level of feeding only applies to approximately 10% of the herd anyway, and these are the high yielders with big forage intakes. They also include fibre sources like beet pulp and keep the cereal level of 30% to reduce risk. Looking at the fibre content of the total diet with good silage, there is plenty of fibre and we have seen that adding straw is just diluting the quality of the diet. You will not get the intake on poor-quality silage, so the risk of digestive upsets is higher. The answer to the fibre question is to make better silage.
Early trends show some evidence of a meal saving on low yielders indoors, but the annual effect is reduced by having more days at grass. Block calving, fewer carryovers and late spring cows probably reduce the effect of the targeted feeding system. Some evidence suggests that higher yielding spring cows ‘‘demand’’ more concentrate but Joe said they need to run this over another season. The high EBI (€160) genotype is delivering decent yield in a winter context, across either feeding system.
The Johnstown winter diet is balanced for energy and protein at the equivalent of 15.5% crude protein in the total diet. This reduces the requirement for expansive purchased protein supplements, and helps to maintain body condition on silage diets where UFL intake can be limiting. With a total DM intake of around 21kg, 13kg to 14kg comes from forage and 7kg to 8kg from concentrate. The total fibre content of 32% to 35% NDF, with 75% of this coming from forage, should be the target with a starch and sugar total of 16% to 18%.
Value of autumn grass
The Johnstown team are keen to stress that improving grazing management is a real avenue to reduced annual feed cost for winter milk producers. One of the key outcomes from the work in Johnstown to date has been the tailoring of autumn grass budgets for winter milk herds.
The standard autumn grass budget of building to 1,200kg DM/ha for spring herds simply doesn’t work with large numbers of fresh calvers in autumn. Instead, they target a peak cover of around 850kg to 900kg DM/ha in late September, to make sure that cows are grazing covers of 1,600kg to 1,800kg DM/ha at most during October.
Joe said: “This means we have to take out more bales later into August to keep the farm under control, especially when we have cows drying off. It was very difficult this year with high growth rates, but we have built a good stock of surplus bales. The trade-off here is that we run out of grass in early November (not a major issue as we are happy to house fresh calvers by then anyway. We start the last round on 5 October (like a spring herd would do) and close it out in 35 days. The upshot is a high average closing cover of 650kg/ha and more grass in spring.”
First-cut silage was harvested in good conditions on 18 May. The test result is 76 DMD at 24% DM and crude protein of 14.2%, which is a good foundation for the winter diet. Second-cut was taken on 11 July with similar quality but the dry matter was 28%.
The Teagasc winter milk conference, kindly sponsored by AIB, will be held in the Ferrycarrig Hotel, Wexford, on Wednesday 1 October.
The morning session will look at the potential direction for winter milk herds in a post-quota environment. Two dairy farmers, Larry Hannon from Kildare and Glenn Forde from Cork, will give their insight and opinion on the likely effects for their farms. Private consultant Cathal McAleer will give a perspective on what has happened to dairy farm feed systems in the effective quota-free environment in Northern Ireland, and look at the lessons for ROI producers. Joe Patton will look at costs and profits for expansion and other post-quota options for a typical liquid milk herd, with an emphasis on growing margins for the farmer.
The afternoon is a practical session, covering feeding issues for the coming winter and an update on the herd performance (Aidan Lawless), preventing lameness across the year (Ger Cusack XLVets), the labour implications with herd expansion (Pat Clarke) and fertilizer planning for better forages (David Wall, Johnstown).
This is a subscriber-only article
SHARING OPTIONS: