Friday, March 29, 2024

Raising the best young stock

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A Dairy New Zealand-led group has been looking for the past year at the best ways to raise young stock, and farmers will start seeing the results in the next few months.
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Focus farms are being set up as a joint initiative between DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb NZ in Northland, South Waikato, the lower North Island and South Canterbury, where weaned calves sent there this spring for grazing will be followed through until they return to the dairy unit for milking almost two years later.

DairyNZ development team leader Rob Brazendale said the farms would demonstrate what good young stock management looked like, including everything from growth rates, pasture intakes and transitioning, to contracts, pricing and relationships between stock owner and grazier.

“We hope to have three to four field days on each of these farms a year so people can come and have a look at what best practice looks like,” Brazendale said.

“We want farmers to be involved in the discussion, not just industry partners.”

He said the focus would be a major programme of work for DairyNZ. Industry partners involved included a wide range of farmers, grazing companies, vets, and genetics companies.

“We want every organisation to collectively agree on the same guidelines so farmers know what’s best.

“We want to be able to give clarity and leadership on a whole lot of issues surrounding young stock grazing.”

The straight-line growth rate targets currently used for dairy young stock have already been discussed.

“We got together people from different industry groups and thrashed it out to see if we could do better than the straight-line growth rate charts available for farmers,” he said.

“In the end we agreed achieving the correct weights at the important times in a heifer’s life – the weaning weight, mating weight, and the weight the animal enters the herd at – is what is important, and the importance of pattern growth in achieving these critical targets is unknown.

“The pasture growth curve fits terribly into the demands of a growing heifer, so no wonder graziers have problems.”

‘We want to be able to give clarity and leadership on a whole lot of issues surrounding young stock grazing.’

Also discussed recently by the group was liveweight breeding values, which assigns animals individual weight targets depending on their genetics.

“Some people just don’t believe the genetics, and there are valid reasons why the actual animal may not match its genetic background.

“If there is inaccurate parentage recorded, that will affect it, and also there is the randomness of genetics. Genetic variation occurs naturally – this is why we are usually not the same size and shape as our brothers and sisters – and cows are just the same.

“Farmers who doubt their liveweight BVs for their young stock should weigh their cows to get a mature weight and graph it from there, we’ve decided.”

Nationally, heifers are on average 11% below target weights, costing the industry an estimated $120 million a year.

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