Milk flows stand up to a price slump
New Zealand milk production dropped just 1.5 per cent last season despite the lowest milk prices in at least 20 seasons and 52 fewer herds.
The 2015-2016 dairy year also featured a shift in ownership structures and breeding and herd improvement changes, said industry advocate DairyNZ and genetics company LIC.
Their newly-released statistics show there were 20,522 fewer cows milked than in the 2014-2015 season, with dairy companies processing a total of 20.9 billion litres of milk containing 1.86 billion kilograms of milksolids. This compared to 21.2b litres of milk or 1.89b/kg the previous season.
The low impact on national milk production was due to the average kilograms of milksolids produced per cow gradually increasing over the past 15 years, said DairyNZ senior economist Matthew Newman.
On average, each cow produced 373kg milksolids last season, close to the 2014-2015 record of 377kg, he said.
On average last season, each cow produced 4185 litres of milk.
Herd numbers fell for the first time in nearly eight years to 11,918. In the North Island, there were 122 fewer herds than in the previous year, while South Island herds increased by 70. North Island milk production fell by nearly 4 per cent, with all regions, except Northland which had no change, producing less milk than in 2014-2015. The South Island posted a 2 per cent increase, and now produces 42.7 per cent of national milksolids, compared to just 31 per cent a decade ago, said Newman.
The use of genetics and feeding cows well had also ensured continual improvement in milking productivity, said LIC NZ markets general manager Malcolm Ellis.
The number of herds being milked by sharemilkers also eased last season, with 30 per cent of herds operating under a sharemilking agreement compared to 32.4 per cent the previous year. Variable order sharemilking herd numbers declined, with 20-29 per cent sharemilkers falling by 22 per cent or 229 herds to 821. Herds owned by sharemilkers (50:50 sharemilkers) declined by 57 or 2 per cent to 2422.
Herds operated by farm owners increased 256 to 8315 herds, a result of variable order sharemilkers moving to contract milking agreements because of the milk price slump, said Newman.
The number of cows milked last season eased by 0.4 per cent to just under five million despite a high number of cows being culled in the past two years, he said.
This reflected a high number of replacement heifers entering herds and some carried-over cows being culled. Newman expected another decline this season in cows milked. The industry continued to show a change in cow breeds with holstein-friesian/ jersey crossbreds now making up 47.2 per cent of cows compared to 45.6 per cent the previous season.
Jerseys now comprise 10.1 per cent of the national herd. Just over 71 per cent of cows were mated by artificial insemination (AI) last season, down 3 per cent on the previous year. The number of yearling heifers mated with AI fell by 26 per cent to just under 164,000, the lowest number in four years.
Herd testing was the lowest level on record as farmers took a knife to their costs. The average six week in-calf rate eased from 66.8 per cent in 2014-2015 to 66.5 per cent last season. The national rate had been relatively steady at about 67 per cent for the past five seasons, said LIC.
Tuberculosis-afflicted dairy herds declined by two to 26. But there was a big decrease in the number of dairy cows with the disease, including lesioned reactor cattle and lesioned cull cattle, from 120 in 2014-2015 to just 27.