Hitting key physical performance targets will help optimise productivity by giving farmers the best chance of maximising the top line income without pushing up costs.
DairyNZ senior project manager Paul Bird says the payout climate has hit home the message that production targets on their own, at any cost, don’t stack up.
But he warns that neither can farmers afford to let milk income go begging as a result of factors such as lost days in milk because of a wider calving spread, low pasture utilisation or letting pasture quality slip.
Nor can they take their eye off heifer liveweight gains or let poor animal husbandry lead to a spike in animal health issues.
Bird says you could argue about which are the top five physical key performance indicators (KPIs) but looking at DairyBase’s physical details reports there are some standouts.
- Pasture eaten
- Six-week in-calf rate
- Production to December 31
- Soil fertility
- Percentage of first-calvers onfarm at end of season one.
No single KPI is going to be the silver bullet.
“Because it’s a whole farm system we’re dealing with there are going to be interactions between them and other KPIs that feed into them,” he says.
Pasture eaten deserves first mention, he says.
According to DairyBase figures the national average for pasture and crop eaten is 12.2 tonnes drymatter (DM)/ha.
That includes all pasture and crop grown on the milking platform.
There’s a big range across the country but also within districts and it’s the localised information that offers the best benchmark to farmers, he says.
“When we try to correlate pasture eaten with profit across the national data set it gets confounded by other issues.
“If we use return on assets as the ultimate measure of profit the variation in land values masks the importance of pasture eaten.”
That’s because land values take account of the fact you can grow more grass in some areas than others.
In Canterbury, for instance, return on assets is 3.6% and average pasture eaten 14.6kg DM/ha, whereas Northland’s average pasture eaten is 9.4kg DM/ha and return on assets similar at 3.7%.
Within districts, where other factors are more equal, the link between profit and pasture eaten is more clearly seen.
Figure one shows the association in the 2013-14 season for farms in a Bay of Plenty focus on dairy study.
Bird says it’s crucial to know what the top quartile figure is for your area and understand where you sit in comparison.
“If you can lift your pasture eaten figure up by even a tonne through better management, that’s going to have a big effect on profitability.”
If farmers aren’t sitting at the top end in their district they should look at two factors – the amount of pasture grown and how well it’s being grazed.
You only know accurate answers to those queries though if you’re actually measuring them, Bird says.
Pasture eaten per hectare can be calculated manually or by using DairyBase.
Keeping paddock and grazing records will highlight any under-performing paddocks and actively assessing pastures will show if correct pre-grazing covers and post-grazing residuals are being achieved.
“If you’re not growing enough look at pasture species, soil fertility, drainage or irrigation management.”
Soil fertility is about keeping fertility in the optimum ranges.
For sedimentary and ash soils the recommended range for Olsen P levels is 20-30 while pumice and peat is 35-40.
“If you’re at 30 on a sedimentary soil you can probably afford to let it slip a couple of points to save money but if you’re sitting at or below 20 you really don’t want to be playing around with that as a cost-saving mechanism.”
The more paddocks soil tested each year the more room there’s likely to be to target some paddocks and leave others out for a year.
Bird says if the pasture eaten figure is low because farmers aren’t utilising pasture well, they should look at stocking rate and calving date as well as how pastures are allocated and grazed each day.
“Look at whether you’re hitting the right pasture cover targets going into the winter and at calving. Are you managing that first grazing round well and then hitting the right round lengths?
“Are you measuring at all?”
The Spring Rotation Planner is used by most top performing grass managers, Bird says.
“If you’re not hitting those targets and you’re not grazing to a consistent 1500kg DM/ha residual you’re giving up some pasture utilisation and pasture quality.”
And that means giving up lowest-cost milk production income.
It comes back to lining up feed demand with supply and having cow feed demand peaking at the same time pasture growth and quality are high.
That’s where stocking rate and calving date are key. It’s also why six-week in-calf rate is a top physical KPI.
Nationally the six-week in-calf rate is 66.8%, based on the national dairy
statistics for 2013-14. The target is 78%.
To achieve that a 90% three-week submission rate is required and of those cows put up for mating, 60% must conceive after the first three weeks.
Nationally, in the 2013-14 season three-week submission rate was 81% and three-week conception was 52.6%.
More cows calving early will mean feed demand can be more easily met by following the pasture growth curve.
Cows will have more time to recover from calving and have one heat cycle before planned start of mating, boosting their chances of getting back in-calf early.
Fewer follow-up bulls will be needed, cutting costs and fewer cows to service helps lift bull performance.
More cows in-calf early will increase the chances of a low empty rate and either help reduce the herd replacement rate, cutting costs, or allow cows to be culled on performance factors other than being empty, which in turn lifts the quality of the herd.
There will also be more calves from artificial breeding (AB), boosting genetic gain and lifting the value of excess calves. BW can be a forgotten physical KPI but simply by using the top AB sire packs, BW should improve along with efficiency of the herd’s ability to turn feed into profit, other things being equal.
“If six-week in-calf rate is low look at your ‘fertility focus’ reports and check what’s happening with three-week submission and conception rates to give you the first clues for what to work on.
“There’s a huge amount of information available to farmers and a lot of expert industry advice they can access.”
Bird says now is the time to start working on one of the biggest factors influencing six-week in-calf rate – cow body condition score (BCS).
Start by assessing every cow’s BCS, match it up with calving date and look at the feed available.
Milking frequency, dry-off and feeding levels are tools to help get all cows to target dry-off BCS. Winter management is also vital to ensure BCS calving targets of five for mixed-age cows and 5.5 for heifers are met.
The percentage of first-calvers on farm at the end of the season is another KPI target relating largely to BCS.
A serious driver behind the target, which is set at greater than 86%, is how well young stock are grown. There are well-documented liveweight milestones that require attention to detail and good animal husbandry right from birth.
These replacements are likely to be the animals in the herd with the highest genetic potential compounding the cost of wastage if they don’t make a second season. The cost of rearing a heifer calf from birth to first calving is estimated to be $1400-$2000.
DairyBase has a number of milk production-related KPIs and Bird says it’s important to look at them in context of the whole farm system, the volume of feed bought-in and feed costs.
On their own, production metrics aren’t a driver of profit because high production can be achieved through non-profitable means.
Plotting production per ha and per cow against profit gives a scatter-gun result showing no clear relationship but benchmarking can highlight problems if production is well below average level.
Production to December 31, if particularly low by comparison, can be a good indicator that stocking rate isn’t right for instance.
“If stocking rate and calving date are right, calving pattern is tight and pasture eaten is high then you should end up with good per-cow production by Christmas.”
Likewise production as a percentage of liveweight can be used as an indicator.
“We talk about guidelines for production of 80% of liveweight but there’s a big “however” with that.
“If you’re striving to achieve this by milking on when cow condition says you shouldn’t or you have to buy in expensive supplements then there’s no point in that (production as percentage of liveweight) as a KPI.”
“Peak per-cow production should not occupy too much thinking time with a grass-based system.
“If one of your primary targets is a high peak then it is likely grass utilisation will suffer as you will always be trying to get an extra kilogram of grass or supplements into your cows and they will leave high residuals.
“A good peak will result if cows calve in suitable condition, graze paddocks at no more than 3000kg DM and leave residuals of 1500kg DM.
