By Greg O’Brien, Dairy Extension Officer Ellinbank
HAY growing areas have low early spring soil moisture, so fodder could be expensive or hard to source.
The Pacific Ocean is likely to offer up less rainfall this season, due to the El Nino effect.
So we are more reliant on getting some rainfall from elsewhere if we are to have an average season. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. The odds keep changing.
Bottom line, it is timely to look at these risks. Firstly, there will be less margin over feed costs this year due to milk price and potentially purchased fodder price.
Given it is margin over feed costs that provides much of the income to pay other bills, it is important to reduce feed costs if we can. Is home-made silage cost effective?
As the season may be drier between now and next spring, we can expect to grow less pasture. Milk production will mirror the amount of feed the cows eat.
So the risk is either make less money from milk or buy more feed to maintain milk income.
If we look to grow more pasture on-farm to off-set some risk, this will incur some additional costs but the costs can be a lower than buying feed.
If nitrogen fertiliser is used to boost pasture growth, the fertiliser might cost about $100 per tonne of extra pasture dry matter grown.
This depends on the price of the fertiliser and the amount of pasture grown, which does vary. Have a chat to someone who can run some numbers for your situation if you are not sure how to calculate the cost.
This extra growth will need to be conserved as silage, is the more expensive option and a contractor should make it for around $140 per tonne of dry matter.
Hay is cheaper to make at around $80 per tonne. So, in this example, it should costs no more than $240 per tonne and two phone calls (one to the fertiliser supplier and another to a silage contractor) to generate some extra feed.
Given the feed is eaten by your herd, you will easily make a margin when it is fed back.
The silage will cost 24 cents per kilogram and when fed to a milker will produce more than a litre of milk at 40 cents a litre. Make sure it is good quality and stored well. You can’t expect to make milk from rubbish fodder.
Should spring grain feeding increase to grow more silage? You might be wondering whether it is a good idea to feed extra concentrates in spring so you can make some extra fodder.
While you might be very confident you will need the extra fodder, the economics of feeding more grain in spring to generate extra silage or hay don’t stack up.
Assuming cows are already well fed in spring, the extra milk produced from feeding more concentrate will be small. However the cows will eat less pasture as a result of being fed extra concentrate.
The concentrates might be $400 per tonne and this could generate say half a tonne of surplus pasture. This needs to be conserved as silage or hay at a cost of say $140 per tonne dry matter.
You are looking at some very expensive spring surplus. Economically it is better to purchase the extra supplements later in the season to fill any feed gap compared to using them to generate extra spring surplus.
More milk will be produced from the extra feed plus the price paid for extra milk will be higher due to seasonal pricing. Good management is the cheapest option.
Good management of pasture and supplements over spring to the cheapest option for generating extra surplus for countering any risk of the season being dry later on. Unfortunately, it can sometimes be hard to achieve in practice.
This said, the concept is pretty simple. Offer the right amount of pasture and supplements to the herd each day. If you match feed offered with her requirements, you will not only have the most cost-effective use of feed, but you will also generate more spring surplus.
There is an opportunity to grow and consume more grass on farms in spring than we do. There are reasons why actual pasture growth can be below potential. These needs to be factored into management decisions.
For a start, pasture growth can surge then slow depending on the weather. So not making adjustments to the area in the milker rotation will result in over-grazing during a prolonged slow growth period.
This slows pasture regrowth and you find yourself short of milker feed. The opposite occurs when there is a pasture growth spurt. The cows can’t eat all the pasture in the grazing rotation.
There is a lot of wastage and quality of the pasture drops. So the strategy is to take it one day at a time. Get each grazing as close to perfect as you can.
Bank any paddock for silage/hay that is longer than grazing height at the time it is due to be grazed. If growth slows, bring the shortest/best quality banked pasture back into the rotation to avoid running short of grazed pasture for the herd.
This allows the rotation to be extended to match the slowing of pasture growth rate.
Finally, the amount of growth you get from spring pastures is related to its tiller density. If you lock a paddock up for too long, I will produce less growth after harvest.
The best total spring pasture yields come from using short (four week) lockups and good grazing management. Sure you will get less silage/hay at each cut. Having shorter lockups means you will need to to cut a larger area.
Some will be ready for harvest in the first half of spring and some in the second half. The reward is more total spring growth, higher quality silage/hay and more milk.
The feed will still be cheaper than purchasing alternatives of similar quality. Most importantly, you will utilise more total spring pasture production as a favourable price.
So it’s time to make some decisions before the spring options run out – the clock is ticking.
