The contract milkers have 11 seasons under their belt with farm owner Richard Stevenson and milk 1050 cows on the 330 hectare platform that was originally five separate farms. The production target for the 2015-16 season was 400,000kg milksolids (MS) and Cameron says it looks like they are on track to beat that by 40,000kg.
While he doesn’t credit the increase to just the Agriseeds competition that saw them win $5000 of new pasture seed to do their 10%/year pasture renewal, he says the new pastures and a renewed focus on pasture management have been the catalyst to growing more grass and making sure the grass translates into milk in the vat.
“Our production is up by 9% this season and I think there are lots of factors contributing to that, but the biggest has to be the more frequent measuring of grass and the more up-to-date information generated to make better grazing decisions with.”
Measuring each paddock every week with a quad-mounted C-Dax unit and inputting the data into Pasture Coach means Cam can rank all 150 paddocks in order of pasture mass and be grazing the longest pasture.
“Paddocks can grow at different rates over a week and paddock sizes are different so we need to concentrate on making the best grazing decisions.
“We can always top up grazing with silage or move to another paddock or top the residual down to the ideal height of 1600kg drymatter (DM)/ha, but we need to know what is there before grazing to be able to tell.
Agriseeds pasture systems specialist Graham Kerr concurs.
“In a low-payout environment pasture is king. The Grass into Gold programme aim is to work with farmers and give them the base principals of how pasture grows and how we think optimal grazing should happen, but real farmers have to sort it out in the real world – how it works and how to make it work.”
Last winter Cam kept 70 cows on the milking platform for the first time, rather than wintering them all on the runoff, and targeted the longest paddocks, which he said really helped going into calving.
“We didn’t have any really long paddocks to get back into shape, because the pasture keeps growing through the winter and those cows kept the quality up.”
From April to July he also kept 90 R1 heifers on the platform to graze the new grass paddocks, helping to keep them uniform and lightly grazed.
“The heifers just stuck to them, as long as the soil conditions were right, and it worked really well to help them establish.”
He also credits the improved pasture management with ensuring cow condition has been better from drying off.
“The early-calvers had enough time and feed to put weight on and the cows were fatter and milked better with less metabolic problems.”
When the herd was metri-checked only 2%, or 50 cows, were off the pace after testing twice, which Cam says was half as many as usual.
He is looking forward to pregnancy testing next month because he hopes the in-calf rate will climb from the cows being in better condition at mating.
“We had 80% submission in the first three weeks this season, which was better than the 60% we usually do, so I am hoping for a good result. Last year our empty rate was 17-18% with a condensed mating so hopefully we can bring that down markedly.”
While the Stevenson operation was already doing regular pasture renewal, Laura Oughton, the local Grass into Gold agronomist with Agriseeds, encouraged them to consider new species and other paths to renewal.
Their traditional pattern was to grow 20ha of turnips for summer feed, planted in early October because paddocks could be dropped from the round and fed from January to February, and 10ha of chopped greenfeed maize later in the season, planted in November and fed from February to May when the maize tassels emerged. New pastures, usually perennial ryegrass species and clover, were sown after cultivation with the aim of being ready to graze in the spring.
In the past the last maize paddocks have been difficult to get established after a late maize crop because growth rates plummet through the winter.
Up to 300 tonnes of barley, grown on the Stevensons’ daughter and son-in-law’s property, is also fed in the dairy and 400t of silage made on another property and fed out in the paddock.
Last season Richard and Cam trialled a further 6ha of renewal, on a warm but free-draining river terrace. They sprayed and direct-drilled it with annual Italian ryegrass and red clover mix.
The idea was to get “fast feed” in the spring – the annual pastures are ready to graze six to eight weeks after sowing, three weeks faster than cultivated paddocks of perennial ryegrass, and at just $350/ha establishment (spray @$100/ha and seed drilled @$250/ha), it was a very cheap option, Cam says.
“The grass has only cost 6-7cents/kg DM and the cows love it – and it has grown so fast that some of these paddocks will have been grazed 12 times by the end of the season.”
He cites growth rates of up to 70-80kg DM/day in the spring and said he noticed the new paddocks growing faster and climbing up the list of longest paddocks after he has done the measuring.
The cows, with their 20,000 bites each day, find the softer and weaker stems of the Italian grasses easier to bite, so their intake increases, Graham says.
“The downside is the grass is softer and ground can be more susceptible to pugging, but it’s cheap enough to come in and undersow 10kg of seed if there is damage and repair it that way.
“The annuals don’t last as long as the perennials and while you might measure 17-18t DM/ha in the first year it will drop to 14-15 by year two and then in year three there will be a marked drop off – that’s when you then need to replace with more short-term annuals or go back into perennial grasses.”
While the Italian ryegrass has been a great success, and one that Cam and Richard hope to replicate this year, Cam says the pasture renewal programme will be a balance of the shorter and longer rotation grasses.
“The great thing is that growing so much extra pasture could allow us to drop out some of the cropping because turnips and greenfeed maize are both expensive and time-consuming in terms of moving cows on and off the crop and chopping and feeding the maize.”
While 230ha of the 330ha platform is now under pivot irrigation, their east coast location and the sometimes low levels of the Ruamahanga River means irrigation can be less than reliable through the summer.
A further 40ha is still under K-line irrigation which is time-consuming to shift.
“In time we might not need the turnips as the irrigation has got better and we can grow more grass.”
The cows are run and milked in three separate herds of similar sizes. In spring all the heifers and a few older cows are together but at mating time everything gets mixed up with drafting for AI and three herds are formed.
This means there are six grazing decisions made each day which makes it complicated for Cam, but he says the regular measuring of the 150 paddocks has made it much easier.
“I make the grazing decisions based on the longest paddocks, I go to the printout and can see the total feed available and knowing how much the herd needs I write the paddock numbers on the dairy whiteboard for the staff to follow.”
“This season we have moved the cows between paddocks more to make sure they are fed adequately and have fed less silage and grazed to lower residuals – that’s better management.”
Making sure the cows eat down to the correct residual is sometimes tricky, but Cam chats with whoever brings the cows out of the paddock and says taking a ride out to check the residual level with the staff member is part of teaching them good pasture management practice.
“We do a lot more topping now, to keep the quality growing.”
Putting the cows back into the paddock seldom works because they prefer fresh grass and will sulk if presented with a half-eaten paddock.
Graham thinks 50 paddocks would be ample on the farm, and taking two-thirds of the fences out and combining the herds down to two would make decision-making and precise grazing much easier.
But that is an on-going discussion with the farmers who say it’s easier for staff to use permanent gates than have to put up electric tapes.
“New conversions are leaning towards having less paddocks and moving to 24-hour grazing with far less paddocks but using electric tapes to control paddock sizes, as its far easier to control exactly what the cows are eating,” Graham says.
Tracking each paddock
Milking the potential from 10% pasture renewal each year could depend on choosing to renew the paddocks with the most potential and the least limiting factors.
After a year of measuring pasture growth in each of 150 paddocks every week, Cam Woodhouse has a record of accumulated pasture growth right across his farm and, importantly, a graph of the huge variety between the top-performing paddocks and the poorest.
As part of the Grass into Gold programme, Agriseeds agronomist Laura Oughton has mapped the figures from each paddock and has estimated a potential 800t of extra pasture growth from improving the underperforming paddocks to a conservative level.
Even if Cam managed to capture half that potential, the farm could produce an extra 32,000kg MS from running an extra 72 cows.
“The range of growth across the farm is huge – from 18t DM/ha down to 3.5t DM/ha and with the potential to renew 30% each year by taking cows off and using short rotation “fast food” the development could be done quickly,” Agriseeds agronomist Graham Kerr says.
“Pasture renewal is a pain in the arse when you are doing it but has huge benefits – it can also pay back the costs within a year of sowing and make a profit from the short-term grasses and breakeven on the perennial species.
“Farmers know instinctively which paddocks are good producers and which are not, but by actually measuring the production they can get a really good handle on what a paddock is capable of and what may be the limiting factors and decide which ones to renew first.”
On the Stevenson farm the paddocks were split into four types – with different potential levels of production; heavy soils with and without irrigation and light soils with and without irrigation.
The four types had widely varying levels of production and by identifying and mitigating limiting factors and then renewing pastures some of the potential 800t of extra grass could be grown, Graham says.
“We are starting to quantify what each paddock is actually growing and to see what is possible – what would it be like if every paddock was humming like the best ones?”
Farm facts
Owners: Richard and Carolyn Stevenson
Contract milkers: Cam and Melissa Woodhouse
Area: 330ha milking platform
Cows: 1050 cows
Production: Target 400,000kg MS, on track for 440,000kg MS
Staff: John Stevenson 2IC, Cliff Cleary, Josh Armstrong, Blake Drabble, Dave Mays.
