The first lot of research conducted at the hub has been a winter feed trial comparing kale and fodder beet.
Speaking at the hub’s first field day, DairyNZ senior scientist Dawn Dalley said there were four herds of 80 cows in the trial, two on beet and two on kale.
"Within each of these systems, we had two different allocations of feed in terms of dry matter."
One herd was fed 85% crop and 15% baleage on beet and the other 70% crop and 30% baleage, and the same percentages on the kale crop.
Preliminary results of the trial discovered the blood phosphorus levels had halved in the cows on beet in the first six weeks on the crop.
"But on the kale cows we didn’t see the same. It shows the importance of phosphorus supplement on beet," Dr Dalley said.
There was no major difference in calcium levels through the winter period while blood magnesium was slightly higher in the beet than in the kale, she said.
The cows’ colostrum was also tested for quality with a brix test, which determined whether or not the colostrum was of good quality or not.
Anything rated 22 or above was good quality colostrum.
What was interesting for the research team was the higher proportion of cows below 22 on the kale compared to the beet.
About 15% were lower than 16, Dr Dalley said.
The kale cows had higher body condition scores at the end of winter, while the somatic cell count was 100,000 higher on the beet than the kale.
"There was also a higher incidence of mastitis in the beet than the kale cows," Dr Dalley said.
More cows calved on the kale than the fodder beet which was interesting for the research team as it had been getting reports of cows not bagging up on beet the same, but the hub had found the opposite.