Friday, March 29, 2024

Kiwi grazing UK-style

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Most cows in the UK live indoors during the harsh winters, but as Anne Lee discovered, some farmers are embracing the New Zealand style of grazing and adapting it to their climate and conditions.  Despite suffering winters every bit as harsh as Southland, the Bower family have shied away from putting cows in wintering sheds on their Staffordshire dairy farm in England. “It’s just not a good use of capital,” Richard Bower said. Instead their 300 Kiwi-style crossbred cows “outwinter” on a woodchip standoff pad that’s adjacent to a concrete feedpad area. It’s unusual in a country where cows are more typically housed at least through the winter and more often than not for the rest of the year as well. But Richard and his wife Shirelle, along with his parents Peter and Val, are converts to the New Zealand grazing style of dairying. Richard experienced our systems first hand in the mid-1990’s when he came out to NZ and worked on farms in the North Island. When he returned home to Wolgarston Farm at Penkridge in Staffordshire, West Midlands his father was won over by his enthusiasm for the lower input system and his convincing financial arguments for it. They began changing over 14 years ago.
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That meant putting in tracks to allow cows to get out into fields, but unlike NZ the deep English soil won’t support a Kiwi-style laneway. Instead they bring in concrete railway sleepers, lying two end to end cross-ways to form a 4m wide lane.

That’s repeated out into the paddocks creating a concrete track. At a cost of around £3-£5/sleeper laid, it means lanes are around £40/lineal metre to make.

They can be hard on feet and small stones are removed frequently by a rotating brush attached to the front of a tractor. Fences and troughs also had to be set up and put in before cows could be turned out to graze.

Then of course there was the transition period, moving cows from year round calving to block calving in spring.

Genetic focus

The New Zealand crossbred heifers are brought back to the farm and housed in a loose stall until calving in late January.

Richard also takes a tough stand at ridding the herd of cows that could be genetically pre-disposed to mastitis. If a cow has mastitis even once she will not see an artificial insemination straw again in her lifetime so no replacement heifers will come from her, he said.

If she gets mastitis three times she’ll be culled.

The Bower herd’s reproductive performance would be comparable with good Kiwi herds. They mate for eight weeks but sell any heifers that fall outside a six week calving window because of strong demand for NZ-type animals – four weeks AI and four weeks with the bull – and have a 10% empty rate.

Springing calves come indoors to a straw calving area but are turned out as quickly as possible after calving onto grass.

Calving starts on February 1 and from there it's 14 days to mid-point. By March 31 it's over so the calving period is a busy time.

They rear more than their required replacement rate to give a buffer of extra youngstock just to cover themselves against the constant threat of TB.

Replacing Kiwi Jersey-cross heifers isn’t easy in the UK so Richard carries extras on longer, selling surplus in-calf heifers to an eager market or taking the opportunity to take out a few extra older cows.

By February 14 anything that’s calved is outside day and night and is grazed based on the spring rotation planner. During the first few days after calving early calving cows will be outside during the day but come back in at night.

There’s no in-dairy feeding system so there has to be a good reason to feed concentrate during the milking season, even in spring. If it’s absolutely necessary Richard will put it through the mixer wagon with silage as the carrier. Typically the concentrate, or cake as it is known, will be pelletised.

The farm only receives 600mm of rainfall a year but the aim is to be all grass for as much of the season as possible. During dry periods Richard will supplement with silage fed on the feedpad and will use it to help extend the round out to 50 days in the autumn.

Richard focuses on cow condition and would rather see animals well fed, having a high health status and good reproductive performance than allow them to milk off their backs and strip condition off them.

Profit goal

The farm has just moved to supplying First Milk, one of England's few cooperatives, and they’ve had to buy shares at 3.5p/litre supplied although they have the choice to share up over time at a cost of 0.3p/litre. If they do that it means they don't get to share in the dividend although they will have full voting rights. This past year First Milk paid a 9% dividend on milk price.

The Bowers are sold on the seasonal NZ grazing-based system and make a comparable farm profit (CFP), including management wages, of 8p/litre.

That compares with many year-round indoor operations that, although they’re doing higher production of around 10,000litres/cow, are struggling to make any profit at all.
Staying away from a production-driven mindset and having profit as the key goal for their dairying business is proving to be a successful approach for the Bowers and one they’ll be sticking to, they said.

Farm stats
Wolgarston Farm, Penkridge, Staffordshire, UK
Owners: Bower family
Total area: 166ha
Grazing area: 106ha
Forage area: 60ha for silage
Herd: 300 Kiwi crossbred, 280 peak milkers
Heifers: 85
Production: 5000 litres/cow, 420kg milksolids (MS)
Milking supplement: 250kg concentrate
Cow wintering: Woodchip standoff pad and concrete feedpad, with silage
Heifer wintering: Loose stall on straw, fed silage.

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