He and his wife Jossane milk 560 cows on 215ha with target production this season of 589kg milksolids (MS)/cow (1535kg MS/ha).
Their farm, near Tapanui in west Otago, hosted the second meeting of the Southland-Otago high-input discussion group in early March.
High input discussion groups have been run by DairyNZ for several years in Canterbury and Waikato but this one is a first for the south. About 40 farmers from high-input and low-input systems went to see the farm’s wintering barn and high-tech 64-bail rotary dairy, with some driving almost two hours to get there.
DairyNZ Western Southland consulting officer Monique O’Connell plans to have the discussion group meeting four times a year, each time on a different high input farm in the region.
The Megaws have owned their farm for 20 years after dairy farming in the North Island. About six years ago they decided to change from low input to high input and built a wintering barn with 570 stalls.
The rotary dairy, which has grain feeding, auto-drafting, mastitis detection and milk volume meters, followed two years later.
Achieving body condition score (BCS) targets, which reduced the number of empty cows from 16% to 9% and resulted in fewer cases of milk fever and other metabolic problems in the spring, had been the big payoff from moving to high input, Megaw said.
“In the spring I used to almost have to sleep with the cows to keep them alive.”
Now cows have a BCS of 5.2 at drying off which is maintained until calving by feeding low-quality silage and straw.
Cows are dried off 60 days before their calving dates with later calvers and carryover cows milked through the winter.
Planned start of calving is August 8 and the six-week in-calf rate is 76% this year.
The wintering barn is used only from May until September but the weather has been good enough in the past two years for cows to calve in the paddocks.
The herd is Friesian, with liveweights between 580kg and 600kg and a stocking rate of 2.8 cows/ha.
“The cows used to be a lot bigger 10 years ago but we have been bringing the size down,” Megaw said.
Bulls are nominated, with semen bought from a variety of companies. Traits sought are good production, udders, milk protein percentage and temperament. The herd’s Breeding Worth (BW) is 109 and Production Worth 139.
“We don’t breed for BW, it just happens.”
Semen from several of the bulls the Megaws have bred, including Maelstrom, born in 2008, is available through breeding companies. Farmers questioned whether he had to breed for protein when feeding high amounts of grain.
“Breeding is a cheap way of getting the protein content up in milk. Why shouldn’t I be doing it?” Megaw said.
About 22% of the herd each year is heifers and the top performers produce about 800kg MS/cow but Megaw is happy if they are doing 80% to 85% of the herd average. Target bodyweight at calving for the heifers is 540kg. They are mixed in with the herd during the winter to get used to being with the cows.
The farm has a nutritionist who determines feeding. Barley and wheat, which have been used in the past, have been mostly replaced with dried distillers grain because of its extra protein content.
Molasses is also fed. At the time of the discussion group, BCS was 4.6, production was 1.8kg MS/cow/day and the cows were on a 23-day length round and being fed 2.5kg/cow/day of pellets.
Effluent from the wintering barn and the dairy is spread over most of the farm and since the high input system was adopted, soil tests had shown less fertiliser and fewer nitrogen applications were needed.
“We’ve really been able to cut back on fertiliser and we’ve never put much nitrogen on but we put on even less now.”
Megaw declined to give the farm working expenses (FWE) saying high input farms did not necessarily have high FWEs.
“Some low input farms have very high FWEs so this is not what it’s about.”
O’Connell said high input or low input could still be profitable or non-profitable.
“It’s about choosing a system you like and making it work for you. That depends on what you’re good at and what’s important to you.”
Farmers grappled with the question of whether cows could be fully fed on grass and the purpose of concentrates in the diet. Megaw said he liked to have well-bred cows and to feed them well which is why he had a high input farm.
His goals were to increase the herd to 600 cows and to have average production at 600kg MS/cow.
“The budgets at the moment say we’re better off having 570 cows on the farm but I’d like to push that up further,” he said.
The discussion group will next meet at the end of April at a farm yet to be announced and will discuss drying off. For more information visit www.dairynz.co.nz/events.
