I think we have lost a bit of appreciation of just how good NZ dairy pastures are as our main feed source. Fortunately this is now beginning to change. It needed to change too, because whether you have a low, medium or high-import system, home-grown pasture is the largest and most important feed resource you have.
So what’s new? It’s time to ditch the input-based 1 to 5 farm system descriptors and look at matching pasture demand with pasture growth for your farm, ie building a farm system and stocking rate around the pasture resource of your farm. For some farmers this will involve a 12-month reliance on pasture and so will need a lower stocking rate to be sustainable. For others it might be six months of pasture-only feeding, with other strategies such as once-a-day milking, early dry-off or bought-in feed to fill the gaps on the margins. These two approaches seem to be the best bets at lower milk prices, based on extensive Farmax modelling done recently by DairyNZ as part of the Tactics campaign.
There’ll be others who will stock their farms higher and rely on pasture-only feeding, for say three months of the year in the peak of spring. They will import or grow more supplement to make this system work. This approach tends to be more risky at low milk prices and while most succeed productively, their bank managers will tell you not many succeed financially. It’s this fact that is causing farmers to take a good, hard look at how they set up their farm for next season, especially how many cows they milk, how they can harvest more pasture from their farm and how little bought-in feed can they get away with.
DairyNZ is running a round of workshops to help farmers with these decisions. They will be interactive, with farmers able to work out things for their own business. Some will be specialist events but many will be based around discussion groups during April and early May. If you don’t normally attend a discussion group you are encouraged to at least get to one of these events. A problem shared is a problem halved.
Visit dairynz.co.nz/tactics for more information on Pasture First events.
Phil Irvine is DairyNZ’s regional leader for North Waikato.
