Dairy shelter is a ‘game changer’
For Inglewood dairy farmers, Bryce and Lee-ann Hunger, five is a magic number.
That’s the condition score they strive to have their 500 crossbred cows at over the winter months.
‘‘We monitor cow condition score right through from April to July,’’ explains Bryce.
‘‘We are not talking averages we try to get every animal to a condition score of five. Once they reach this figure, cows go on to a maintenance diet.’’
Four years ago, the Hungers invested in what they term their ‘‘herd home’’- covered feed pads which enabled them to house their herd both over winter, and during wet periods on their 190 hectare, high altitude, mostly flat farm on Upper Dudley Road.
For the Hungers, the installation of what is known as a Redpath standoff dairy shelter proved a game changer, but the capital outlay was considerable $550,000 for the 111 metre long and 55 metre wide facility.
‘‘But we wouldn’t be without it. The herd home offers some huge advantages. For example, when housing the cows we feed maize silage, palm kernel and a lesser volume of hay. No feed is wasted in that nothing is trampled into the ground,’’ says Bryce.
‘‘Cows no longer pug the paddocks and we calve inside the sheds, which makes for healthier calves as well as healthier cows. It’s all done on wood chip flooring.’’
Cows start moving into the ‘‘herd home’’ from March onwards for two or three hours a day and are placed there full time from June until after calving from August 1. After that, cows go into the sheds only when it’s really wet.
‘‘We grow 20-25 hectares of maize annually and our average yield is about 22 tonne per hectare,’’ says Bryce.
‘‘We grow enough maize on the farm to get us through the winter and to take us through to the following autumn. All the maize is fed out over winter, when cows are fed four kilograms of maize silage, per cow, per day. They are also fed 90-100 tonnes of palm kernel over winter, equating to two kilograms of P.K. per cow per day, plus a bit of hay as roughage.
Rainfall on the Hunger property is measured in metres, rather than millimetres - three and a half metres of rain per year, equating to 3500 millimetres per year.
‘‘The last two years have been pretty bad – even this one has been not been much better!’’ says Bryce.
‘‘However, the property is well drained, and the soil type is freedraining, enabling it to dry out pretty quickly.’’
Production is around 245,000 kg milksolids annually.
‘‘When we didn’t have the sheds, we used to dry our cows off a lot earlier – we started drying cows off in March – but now we don’t dry them off until June,’’ explains Bryce.
‘‘If we graze the cows outside, it takes that much longer to add a condition score, whereas if the cows are in the sheds, it takes only four weeks to do this. It takes double this time to achieve this if the cows are grazed outside.’’
Future production gains says Bryce, will likely come from doing what is being done now, but doing it more efficiently rather than just driving for increased production.
‘‘Formerly, we used to graze our young stock off the farm but since we have had the ‘‘herd home,’’ young stock are grazed on the farm. We just grow more grass now!
‘‘We are able to do this because no grass is lost through pugging by cows in wet periods and we are also growing our pastures to their full potential.’’