A covered feedpad/standoff is working just as its owners and manager envisaged – it’s getting cows off wet ground to save pasture and reduce pugging damage to soil, it’s dramatically cutting supplement wastage, and cows are happy and healthy.
It will also be helpful when it comes to cutting nitrogen leaching, something that’s fast becoming a consideration for farmers throughout the country.
Mid-Canterbury dairy farmers Graeme Wall and Shelly Singer are in the second season on their second farm – a 200ha conversion at Lismore, near Mayfield where they’re peak milking 780 cows.
The 2009 Canterbury/North Otago Sharemilkers of the Year, originally from the West Coast, came up through the dairying ranks before going large-scale sharemilking and on to an equity partnership that included sharemilking 1400 cows for the partnership.
‘It was good for the heifers to give them a bit of training. Having the feedpad right there just makes it so easy.’
From there, with the wind-up of the partnership, they bought their own 800-cow farm a little closer to Ashburton before converting at Lismore.
They looked hard at infrastructure options for the conversion and say a clear understanding of what they were trying to achieve helped in their decision.
It meant they weren’t tempted to go beyond the covered woodchip pad and risk moving into more intensive systems.
Primarily they wanted to look after cows and calves and get them off wet, muddy, or even snow-blanketed paddocks during calving, save paddocks from damage to make sure pasture production and utilisation were also protected at any time of the year, and importantly cut supplement wastage.
Cow comfort and animal health were a priority.
The pad let them achieve what they wanted to in terms of cows and feed and the roof protected the pad, extending its life, Graeme told a group of other Westland Milk Products suppliers visiting as part of a tour to look at infrastructure options.
Unlike the pad, the feed’s left uncovered and comes in the form of maize, and pasture and lucerne silages fed out on concrete strips, about 1m wide, that run the length of both long sides of the outside of the shelter.
Graeme and farm manager Richard Ellison don’t believe that leaving feed uncovered has any significant impact on wastage but covering it would have added about $15,000 to the cost.
It’s a cost that just wasn’t warranted, Graeme says.
All up the structure cost $500,000, which was about $100,000 more than Graeme had anticipated, thanks to hefty regulations on anchoring the 104 wooden support poles for the roof. They had to be concreted 2m into the ground.
He expects that the payback period on the investment will be about 10 years, based on the savings he’s already seen from less supplement wastage and the extra milk income thanks to the fact they can much more cost-effectively milk later calving cows longer.
“In wet, muddy conditions you’ll lose up to 50% of supplement you feed out on the paddock,” Graeme says.
Now it’s realistically about 10%, he and Richard agree.
The whole feedpad/standoff area is 2800m2, measuring 140m long and 20m wide. It’s a single span roof so there are no central support poles to get in the way or work around.
The base was dug out and humped and hollowed with drainage coil laid lengthways along the two hollows. The drainage empties to a sump that is connected to the effluent system but they’ve yet to see any liquid come out into the sump.
A 250mm layer of pea gravel was laid over top with another 700mm of woodchip bedding spread on top of that.
‘It worked very well, we had little pasture damage at all.’
They processed the 186m3 of woodchips themselves on-site from logs they bought in.
How long the woodchip bedding lasts is the big question. They’re hoping they’ll just need to scrape the top 200mm off and replace it annually for a few years before it all needs replacing.
Richard says the pad is aerated using a maxi-till about once a week through the peak of calving and the good airflow through the shelter dries out the surface quickly. Cows are clean and dry as are the calves born in it.
They’ve had no issues with mastitis.
The area where cows stand to feed is the most compacted although by mid-August was still looking relatively good.
While there’s always the option to concrete that strip it’s not something they really want to do as it would then need to be scraped off regularly adding time and cost to the operation as well as more effluent.
A concrete nib wall rises about 500mm above the top of the woodchip and has a wooden plank then slotted in between posts.
Brackets fastening the planks into the posts have enough room for another plank to be positioned on top so that if they add more woodchip bedding the planks, that act as breast rail cows lean over to feed, can be made higher too.
The piping that acts as a neck rail to stop cows walking over top of the planks is clamped and can be lifted, as can the heavy duty fabric that comes part-way down the sides allowing the whole side of the structure to rise with a lift in bedding height.
The heavy-gauge galvanised frame and membrane fabric roof and sides is from Simple Shelter.
Graeme and Richard made sure it was rated for high winds (160km/hour) and heavy snow, having experienced both in Canterbury in the past few years.
The structure is positioned to run with the north-west wind, which can be the fiercest.
Although it wasn’t erected at the time of last spring’s violent wind storm it has been tested with extremely strong winds in early spring.
Richard said it handled gusts of over 120km/hour without any problem and didn’t create any real extra noise.
Cows were quite happy to be standing under it while the wind was roaring.
Rainwater off the roof is collected in spouting that runs along the length of both sides of the shelter with downpipes taking water to nearby adjacent shelter belts.
The structure’s only been in since December but has been put to good use through a wet period in April, in early June to help extend milking and take advantage of the record payout, and more recently through calving.
‘In wet, muddy conditions you’ll lose up to 50% of supplement you feed out on the paddock.’
Richard says during April, when they had more than 100mm of rain in 48 hours, the feedpad had enabled him to spread one herd out so they had twice their normally allocated area over 12 hours while the second herd on the farm had been brought into the feedpad shelter and fed silage. Over the next 12 hour period the herds were swapped around so the second herd went out onto a new expanded pasture allocation and the first herd came in for supplement.
“It worked very well, we had little pasture damage at all,” Richard says.
The difference in pasture covers now between the Lismore farm and the first farm is significant, with damage from pugging showing up in several paddocks on the other farm, Graeme says
Through late May and up until June 20 the sheltered pad also allowed the farm to keep 200 later calving cows milking. Good growing conditions and pasture covers meant they were still getting about 8-10kg drymatter (DM)/cow/day from pasture with any silage supplement fed on the feedpad after milkings.
The farm feeds grain and palm kernel in the dairy, with cows fed to yield so the highest producers get about 4.5kg/cow/day at peak. This season the grain’s been cut back in favour of palm kernel because of price.
Last season cows produced 495kg MS/cow although that didn’t include any August milk as the conversion didn’t carry out its first milking until September.
This spring Richard has used the feedpad for springers and calving cows. They have free access to a paddock adjacent to the feedpad but there was little grass available.
Instead they were fed 7kg DM/cow of lucerne and maize silage heavily dusted with magnesium oxide on the feedpad and a mix of 1kg grain and 1kg palm kernel in the nearby 80-bail rotary dairy.
“We take them through the dairy every day and draft off any calved cows. It was good for the heifers to give them a bit of training. Having the feedpad right there just makes it so easy,” Richard says.
He notes that most of the newborn calves will be found in the covered feedpad area rather than out in the paddock although when given the choice cows do prefer to spend time outdoors, unless they’re calving or eating.
Key points
Area: 200ha milking platform
Cows: 780 crossbreed peak milk
Production: 400,000kg milksolids (MS) target 2014-15
Supplement: 1.2 tonnes/cow total. Palm kernel 700kg DM/cow, grain 400kg/cow, 100-200kg silage
Costs: Farm working expenses budgeted $4.30/kg MS
Farm dairy: 80-bail rotary, Protrack, auto-feeding, auto cup removers, auto drafting.
