The guest speaker at the Jersey New Zealand conference in Nelson recently said there was $1000 difference in income between a good heifer in its first season and a poor one.
"We need the heifers to come in like a lineout of All Blacks," he said.
"We need to make a lot more investment in these young animals coming into the herd because we're wasting this genetic material."
He said he got calls every day from farmers who had underweight heifers.
A well-grown heifer not only improved the chance of retaining its genetics in the herd, but also the longevity of the animal. Some heifers did not reach their maximum weight until they were five years old.
Heifers were normally shy eaters when they entered the herd, so needed to be offered plenty of feed, Hague said. Long walks to the dairy would take weight off them, so it was better to keep them close to the dairy, or if long walks couldn't be avoided, milked just once a day.
"A third of our dairy enterprise is a kindergarten for heifers," he said.
Growing good heifers began as newborn calves when good colostrum was essential to get them started well, Hague said. He was a fan of weaning at five to six weeks and then 20% protein calf feed to 15 weeks, with access to rock salt.
"Salt changes their behaviour with less sucking and cribbing. It keeps them nice and healthy and they will be imprinted for the rest of their lives with a taste for salt."
Feeding could also contribute to empty cows with the loss of the foetus, Hague said.
"Later on they come back as silent cyclers or not cycling as well. In fact, a lot of them will be very fertile cows but because they've lost the weight off their back, they've run out of energy.
Another problem area was the lactating cows that ended up at the bottom of the herd in production and often made less than their fixed costs. No amount of feed was going to lift their production high enough, Hague said. He suggested the fixed cost averaged about $1600 a cow, so to cover overheads on a $6 payout, a cow needed to produce 400kg milksolids (MS). Rising costs meant the target would lift to 429kg MS by 2015.
"You've got to get rid of those cows that are unprofitable and that reduces your stocking rate, so you need to look at a full plan to keep grazing pressure up or you will lose grass quality. So you take some paddocks out for supplementary feed to keep the grazing pressure on the rest."
When buying feed, farmers needed to make sure they were getting a return. Hague recommended they looked at margins rather than the cost.
"Never get wound up about costs of feed,” he said.
“Focus on margins. Otherwise you end up buying nothing."
