Admittedly, after seven years of meeting and often exceeding clients’ expectations the level and need for communication has eased. But Lissaman’s advice to anyone starting out in dairy grazing or taking on new clients is to find out what is expected from the outset.
“If you want 490kg Jersey heifers by the end of April you need to tell your grazier,” he told an audience of mostly dairy farmers at this winter’s South Island Dairy Event (SIDE).
“As a grazier, if we have to go and buy palm kernel and plant expensive crops to meet those [in this case extreme] expectations then we will but there needs to be fair compensation.”
Sometimes dairy farmers might need to be encouraged or reminded to take an interest in their heifers, he suggested. “The grazier isn’t a mind reader. They don’t know what your expectations are.”
Lissaman was speaking alongside DairyNZ’s Sarah Dirks at SIDE. Dirks project manages a joint Beef + Lamb New Zealand and DairyNZ heifer grazing focus farm initiative which is being expanded this year (see p55).
“Nearly 50% of the issues with heifer rearing are down to relationship management,” she told the SIDE audience, citing findings from eight regional focus groups run prior to setting up the focus farm initiative.
Sometimes graziers felt they were being asked to “make a silk purse from a sow’s ear” with dairy farmer clients expecting top heifers back despite providing poor, underweight calves at the outset.
Just how many heifers fail to reach industry-agreed targets was revealed in 2012 when LIC found that nationwide, on average, heifers join the herd 11% lighter than they should be for their age based on their liveweight Breeding Worth (BW).
“Seventy three per cent of heifers were at least 5% below target. That’s not ideal from an industry perspective,” Dirks said.
Light heifers struggle to compete in the herd resulting in poor production, low in-calf rates and consequently highly expensive culls or carry-overs.
So how should targets for heifers be set? Dirks said using liveweight BW “is one of the most robust ways” on the proviso it is done across a mob and not used as “a compliance tool” for individual animals.
Normal variation around genetically predicted liveweight is plus or minus 5% and up to 10% variance either side is “not uncommon”, she said.
Also, an estimated 23% of all calves are mismothered, with the worst herds hitting 70% mismothered.
“That’s quite a risk if you want to use BW to set individual liveweight targets.”
As a rule, no more than 5% of a mob should be more than 10% behind the mob target, she suggested.
Lissaman said they use a mob average liveweight target for contracts, with bonuses and penalties for above or below target results. They check liveweight monthly from arrival of weaner calves in November and December through to returning heifers as in-calf R2s in May, 18 months later.
“Day to day we identify the bottom 25% and target these to try to lift them back to the mob average. We don’t have to worry about the top 25%, for the next 50% decent management gets them there. It’s that bottom 25% where the effort’s needed.”
At 22 months, heifers should be 90% of their mature weight excluding weight of pregnancy. Dirks noted 1990s research by MacDonald et al showed the most productive cows were ones that grew at 0.6kg a day pre-puberty, and 0.7kg a day post mating.
However, as growth rate charts presented by Lissaman showed, the reality is heifer growth is more roller-coaster than straight-line off the dryland rearing property he manages.
“It is really scary,” he admitted.
Heifer rearing missed out on levy-funded research and extension for years with neither DairyNZ nor Beef + Lamb New Zealand prepared to pick up the tab. But that’s changed with the levy bodies’ co-funded focus farm programme.
Last year four heifer grazing farms provided the forum for programmes in Northland, King Country, Manawatu and North Otago, the aim being to improve information flow and results for both graziers and dairy farmers.
A field day in the North Otago programme earlier this winter revealed the wide range of rates and arrangements for heifer grazing:
- $6-$11 a head each week for R1s
- $11-$15 for R2s
- roughly half had written contracts, half didn’t
- some included bonus and penalty schemes for exceeding or missing targets while others didn’t, and
- a few were paid on liveweight gain but most were fixed per-head, per-week rates.
DairyNZ’s Otorohanga consulting officer Sarah Dirks project manages the programme, which is lead by DairyNZ team leader productivity, Rob Brazendale. At the North Otago field day Dirks highlighted the role graziers play in the dairy industry, allowing dairy farmers to maximise return on investment in cows, shed, grass and other milking infrastructure on the dairy platform.
“It’s not good use of that feed on the dairy farm to use it to rear young stock.”
Even with Fonterra’s August 7 payout revision that is still the case, she said.
“On a cents per kilogram basis it [heifer grazing] is still on par or cheaper than palm kernel and there are very few dairy farms using absolutely no supplement. If you bring them home, the feed has to come from somewhere.”
She said DairyNZ is encouraging a long-term view of grazing arrangements during the current downturn.
“If you’ve got a good grazier, why would you leave? It’s very difficult to find a good one and if you bring them home, when are you going to drop cow numbers? We still think it [off-farm grazing] is a good investment but each individual situation needs to be reviewed.”
Whether that review includes rates will depend on the value from current arrangements and the competition from the grazier’s other enterprise options, she said.
“We [dairy farmers] still have to be competitive.”
The heifer grazing focus farm programme was due to be expanded this season with a farm each in Taranaki, Southland and Canterbury
added.
However, Dirks said it was probable only the Canterbury programme will go ahead because of demand on DairyNZ’s time with its recently announced individual farm visit programme
