Farmers Daniel Ditchburn, Russ Young and Kerry Burt are extracting strong profitability from a pasture-first approach to dairy farming.
Their feed used for milk production was between 58% and 60%. Each of them prefer a simple system based on visual and number-crunching without getting overly bogged down in data.
They were in a farming panel sharing their thoughts on homegrown feed to about 100 farmers attending a focus day at Lincoln University Dairy Farm.
The trio are above average for Canterbury farmers in homegrown feed eaten by their herds.
Mr Burt’s sharemilking operation achieves feed consumed of 18.9 tonnes of dry matter per hectare, which is just above the average for the top 20% of farmers, while the other two farmers are at 15.9t/ha and 15.7t/ha.
That is on a par with 15.8t/ha by LUDF and above the 15.2t/ha average for the region.
The three farmers use between 163kg/ha to 178kg/ha of nitrogen used to grow the feed compared with 174kg at LUDF and the Canterbury average of 150kg.
Mr Burt and wife Aimee run their 50:50 sharemilking business with nearly 1100 cows in two operations at Leeston and Hinds.
They developed the business after he arrived from Bay of Plenty 14 years ago with a pair of gumboots, a $5000 car and "a dream" of farm ownership they are working towards.
Their Leeston farm of 550 cows produces 1922kg of milksolids to the hectare at 517kg per cow.
Mr Ditchburn and his wife came from spending a couple of seasons in Waikato to Canterbury for its opportunities and now contract milk 680 cows near Dunsandel. Their milk production is 1681kg/ha at 472kg per cow.
He said Canterbury had been good to them and was reliable for growing feed.
"We run a pretty simple system and like to keep things real. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel, as somebody has already done that."
Ashburton’s Mr Young is the regional manager for nine Canterbury farms of Southern Pastures’s 18 farms nationwide.
Eight of them are in Bankside and Te Pirita, with one operation at Staveley. His farm data on a 1014 cow farm was 1666kg/ha for milksolids at 479kg per cow.
He said they measured their homegrown feed results throughout the season, including feed coming into the farms, and matched this with milk data and monitoring every paddock.
Mr Ditchburn said it was a surprise to learn they were among the better farmers for homegrown feed. This was a result of trying to run an efficient system to maximise the feed they could grow, he said.
Mr Burt said they ran a system which worked for them and their team and this had created results.
"But I’m not someone who is standing there every day working out these numbers to make sure I get this circle for this box. I just run a simple system that is obviously spitting out the numbers you see. Simplicity is key in my opinion."
The couple run online spreadsheets with Google Sheets over their business so their team can see targets and each manager feeds data every two weeks, with results shared on group chats so staff can understand the daily operation all the time.
"So we have buy-in from every single person on the farm, as opposed to me telling the boss and then the boss relaying it and by the time it gets to the bottom it’s a Chinese whisper. Every single person is reading that information and utilising it."
Staff were paid bonuses on set business goals they wanted to achieve and managers were paid on key performance indicators being met, he said
Mr Ditchburn said they also prized communication with staff.
"We are always talking and the first question after a good morning is: What is the residual? What’s it look like? Are we going to need feed out? Can it wait to 11am?
"So it’s just talking and sitting down with those guys talking about a farm walk every week and what the pre-grazings look like and making those decisions whether we should be shutting down for silage or feeding silage. That’s probably our main driver — that communication between us and staff."
Data-wise, farm walks were probably key for him to know growth rates in paddocks and having a good understanding of what their pre-grazing needs to be in order to hit residual targets, he said.
"But not getting too hung up on the pre-grazing. We run a simple system of 24 hour grazing and the cows go in at night and we know they will be well fed over the night time and the next day put it in silage as and when we need to.
"We hold cows up a little bit during the day in the afternoon milkings, but nothing too major. That’s the key data I need, other than making sure we get our mating right too."
He said it was easy to get bogged down with too much data and farmers were dealing with live animals which would tell them their needs.
Mr Young said all of their farms were contract milked and there was a real emphasis on training and really knowing the people and families.
He said they went through a lot of data on the nine farms, and focused on aligning it towards the results they were seeking — such as mating to see which age groups of cows were cycling.
"Opening up a spreadsheet and seeing a heap of data flow through you want to go in with what you are looking for and go in with a plan for what you want to pull out of it.
"Going to the spring rotation plan we do a farm walk and adjust the plan where the data is pointing us, so if growth rates are low we adjust how much silage is being put out to effect this.
"So use the data the way you want to use it and don’t get bogged down in data that’s not relevant to you."
Mr Burt said they concentrated on useful data in their spreadsheets developed with farming friends and making it as easy as possible for staff to understand so time was not wasted.
"The best advice I got at the start of my career was 90% of the job was having a look."
Mr Young said to improve further they were aiming to lift the bottom farm to the level of the other eight farms at Southern Pastures by nailing the fundamentals in round lengths and spring rotation plans.
Other advice was to lift the lowest performing paddocks to the top.
Mr Burt said they were always trying to harvest at least 17t/ha and had a key number they liked to stay under for supplementary inputs in normal seasons.
For imported feed eaten, including winter grazing, Mr Ditchburn was at 4t/ha, Mr Young 3.6t/ha and Mr Burt 3.4/ha compared with LUDF’s 2.8t/ha. The Canterbury average is 3.7t/ha and the top 20% 3.4t/ha.
