Their pasture and animal health management put them well ahead in milk produced per cow liveweight and in lower rates of cow losses.
Research overseas and in NZ showed leading farmers are ahead of the consultants, institutions and available information in the work they’re doing, veterinary surgeon and farm systems analyst Brian McKay told a Federated Farmers dairy group presentation in Christchurch.
He’s part of a two-year Ministry for Primary Industries programme, Farm System Change, designed to provide essential information based on the work of the best farmers.
Seventeen farmers were hand-picked for the project and their case studies now appear on the MPI website.
The researchers studied the farm records over five years to get a cycle of financial and climate conditions.
A key finding was the top farmer group averaged an 89% to 93% level of milksolids to cow liveweight. The national average was about 72%, that is 381kg/MS on a liveweight of 528kg.
Land use economist Ray McLeod said the case study group achieved an average 1.6% cow loss a year compared to 2.2% nationally, effectively a 30% lower loss level. A lot of empty cows were also being replaced every year on NZ farms.
“They’re getting the same amount of milk with 80 cows and 16 replacements as farms on the national average of 100 cows and 22 replacements. There’s less money invested per kilogram of milksolids produced.”
The top farmers are making the best use of every kilogram of drymatter in converting it to production at a rate about 25% above the national average. That resulted in better breeding, a longer milking season, a longer lactation and lower break-even financial figures and returns on farm assets.
McKay said that is due partly to the nature of supplementary feed on top of the core pasture diet, it is more complementary feed for a specific purpose rather than just supplementary.
The research group is trying to work out the optimum amount of grass and feed a cow can eat but it is problematic to get an exact picture rather than a best guestimate in the right amount of feed.
McLeod and McKay are contracted to the research programme.
Katrinka Good, one of the MPI staffers in the project, said environmental management is a key aspect of the work.
“We’ve found that they are all working hard on that and treating the regulatory environment as the absolute minimum of what they’re doing.”
The farmers are achieving more effluent capture and recycling, McLeod said.
The 17 farmers are from Northland to Southland with four from Waikato and were selected because they are known to be high achievers, Good said.
They have a range of ownership structures and herd numbers range from 250 to 2900 cows.
Five of the farmers, in Northland, Bay of Plenty, Otago and Southland, chose not to be identified in the MPI case study presentation. The others are: Corin and Wendy Schick (Moo’s ‘R’ Us) in Northland; Zach Mounsey (Rustic Dairies), John Hayward and Susan O’Regan (Judge Valley Dairies), Rex and Sharon Butterworth and Marc and Maria Gascoigne in Waikato; Matt Barr (Te Tiringa Farms) in Bay of Plenty; Dairy Holdings (Peeble Siding), Mark and Devon Slee (Melrose Dairy), and Rakaia Maori Incorporation (Tahu a Tao Farm) in Canterbury; John and Ruby Foley (Glenmoa Farm) in Otago; and Blair Murdoch and Rebecca Jamieson in Southland.
Good said MPI began the project as part of the industry response to changing environmental attitudes and was based on what the ministry could do to accelerate the rate of change.
