“But do watch what we’re doing closely,” South Island Dairy Development Centre (SIDDC) executive director Ron Pellow said.
“Stay engaged because it (LUDF’s system) may look quite different to what it’s looked like in the past.”
The highly profitable, internationally followed LUDF is shunning the option of investing heavily in capital infrastructure by putting in a standoff area, feedpad or even more expensive housing. Instead it’s aiming to cut nutrient losses in line with Canterbury’s new environmental regulations by dropping its stocking rate and bought-in feed inputs, maintaining high utilisation of high quality feed and maintaining a diverse pasture mix that includes chicory and plantain over a proportion of the farm.
It will attempt to scale up a farmlet trial known as the low stocking rate efficient (LSE) study carried out at the nearby Lincoln University Research Dairy Farm (Dairy Exporter, May, page 11).
That will mean slashing the stocking rate to 3.5 cows/ha, a significant departure from the 3.9-4.3 cows/ha of the past and peak milking 560 cows rather than the 630 of last season.
It will require upping production to 500kg milksolids (MS)/cow from about 460kg MS/cow last season and 477kg MS/cow the previous season and assumes cows will consume about 16.4 tonnes drymatter (DM)/ha of pasture averaging 12 megajoules of metabolisable energy (MJME)/kg DM over the season.
That will allow it to meet its low input targets of just 300kg DM of bought-in supplement and only 150kg N/ha/year of nitrogen fertiliser. Last season the farm used 250kg N/ha and the previous season 350kg N/ha.
Based on Overseer modelling the low-input system should reduce leaching on the milking platform to about 33kg N/ha/year, down from about 38-41kg N/ha/year.
Importantly for the environment it should also significantly reduce nitrate losses for the whole catchment as fewer cows will be wintered, fewer young stock reared and less silage produced elsewhere.
Pellow said it’s expected that 16% less land will be required for the entire farming enterprise including the land for support activities and the milking platform. That will mean 12% less nitrate is leached into the catchment, all without reducing the amount of milksolids produced.
On the milking platform Overseer modelling suggests nitrogen losses will be 4% less compared with the season just finished and 10% below the previous year when the farm still had the benefit of the nitrification inhibitor eco-n.
“If we can do all this for the same profitability then I think we’ve got a nice option,’ Pellow said.
Managing the platform at a lower stocking rate with reduced inputs will require changes to some decision rules but maintaining a constant low residual won’t be one of them.
Ensuring cows have high intakes of high quality pasture will be vital to achieve the production target, which in turn is essential to achieve profitability that’s on a par with previous years, as will maintaining good cow condition through the season.
Lincoln University Farm 2014-15 targets
Cows: 560
Production: 500kg milksolids (MS)/cow
Bought-in supplement: 300kg drymatter(DM)/cow
Nitrogen: 150kg N/ha
Pasture eaten: 16.4t DM/ha.
