“It’s a great recording tool. I can track what our production is doing each day.
“As we enter our calving records the info is up to date and I can keep an eye on the feed situation,” Burton says.
“It’s great for identifying optimal cow numbers for the farm.”
The farm spring calves 570 mixed-breed cows.
The Burtons have spent several seasons moving away from straight Friesian and heading toward a Kiwicross to bring more Jersey in.
“The farm gets wet in winter. We want to bring our liveweight down and now we can take advantage of the extra fat in the milk from the Jersey.”
The farm sits between a system 3 and 4, taking a lot of silage off the support block and some off the platform and feeds a bit of chicory.
The in-shed feed system was installed six years ago and Burton uses it to feed special blends from mid-July to Christmas. For the rest of the season he feeds mostly palm kernel blends.
“We work with Graincorp to plan our feeding. They provide great technical advice and are right on their game with blends. The support is great, they monitor our production results and check in every 2-3 weeks to provide recommendations.
“They sell meal but they push pasture utilisation first and meal is used as a top-up. It works for us. Se do a lot of pre-graze mowing to try to increase our cows’ intake. We believe they use less energy that way. They just vacuum it up and sit down.”
Burton enters his calving and pasture information into the Tracker programme and it gives him weekly updates and ideas of what he can do to maximise production.
“It’s not hard to keep the data up to date. I lay on the couch at night transferring from my notebook to the app. Having that accurate calving spread is key. I can see if we’re going to run into a feed deficit and do something about it.”
In this system Burton has been able to milk fewer cows and still achieve the same production. The shed is at maximum capacity and fewer cows makes management easier.
He wanted a feeding system to lift production and keep condition on the cows in the feed deficits.
It had to be a simple system without a feed pad and he didn’t want to buy more machinery or build bunkers. In-shed feeding seemed a great fit.
“I wasn’t really involved when dad was looking at it all but I know he was looking at the cost-benefits with lifting production, not just lifting production alone.”
He also aims to lift the six-week in-calf rate above 75% and knows using the system to help maintain condition will help.
There are many reasons Burton recommends the system to other farmers.
“Ours is all electronic. It’s simple and doesn’t require extra labour like other feeding options.
“In-shed feeding is one of the cheapest options to set up and it’s easy to maintain.”
“There are lots of options for types of feeds and it’s a good option for people who don’t want to use it all season.”
He also credits reduced wastage as a bonus.
He found feeding maize in the past frustrating because of the amount of wastage.
Burton is an equity partner in the farm business alongside his father John and brother Alex. He’s also contract milking the farm this season after coming home two years ago. He had been driving tankers for Fonterra for several years and had alternated between travel and different bits of farm work before that.
“I wanted to get out and do a few different things before I settled on the farm.
“Before I came back I completed my levels three and four through Primary ITO, which was really worthwhile.”
Burton says there’s a lot of valuable technical knowledge taught in the training.
His brother is an electrician with his own business and John does more of the behind the scenes work lately. He used to run the farm with the previous equity partner and Ryan worked with the previous contract milker when he first came home.
He now oversees the day to day running of the farm and his team consists of two full-time and one part-timer.
“My team is keen to know why we are feeding the way we do and what we can achieve by changing. It’s great having them so engaged.”
This is their third season using the feed service from Graincorp and Burton believes he is finally starting to use the system to its full capabilities.
He’s aiming for consistent production across seasons. He is already 12,000kg milksolids up from last year and with some refining he hopes to consistently achieve between 225,000kg and 230,000kg milksolids each season.
