Nice milking with beets and beans

Ruben Marijnissen is highly motivated to achieve the highest possible nutritional value of his land. Together with roughage specialist Antoon Verhoeven, he has been working for years on optimizing his maize and grass cultivation. Later, fodder beets and field beans were also added. "With these concentrate crops I push my feed purchases, and it milks very well too!"

Since 8 years ago, Ruben decided that his forage cultivation should receive the same attention as the cattle. "I have always been a real breeding enthusiast and decided to look at my crops on the land with that view. In my opinion, to continue farming we have to be really sharp about fixed costs, and feed purchases are a big factor in that. It gives me a lot of energy to always set goals and then realize them."

Ruben has a lot of contact with Antoon Verhoeven about all aspects of roughage, from cultivation to feeding. 'Antoon is extremely driven and is always there for me with practical advice.'

Fodder beets for more kVEM per hectare
In the arable region of Schouwen-Duiveland, Ruben works together with arable farmers for the purchase of maize and the disposal of manure. In order to obtain even more nutritional value from his own land, Ruben started growing fodder beets three years ago in consultation with Antoon. After the first winter of feeding Ruben was sold.

Despite the drought, the Tarine fodder beets a gigantic yield of 148 tons per hectare. In September I dig up a small part to start with fresh feeding, I let the rest grow out. I feed the beets fresh until March, 13 kg per day. It is wonderful feed: the total feed intake increases, as do the components. The manure is also much nicer and I save a kilo of concentrates with it.'

Field beans as concentrate cultivation
Milking as much as possible from own feed, that brought another new crop to the company in 2019: field beans† Limagrain has been offering winter field beans in the Netherlands since 2016: field beans that you sow in the autumn, with a yield potential of 5,5 to 8,5 tons per hectare. 'We still have to get a good grip on the cultivation and the drought also had an impact on the yield last year. But it's great food. I use the ground beans as a replacement for soy and corn flour, the bean flour provides a lot of protein and starch. Utilization is top notch, the urea has remained sharp at 17 - 18 with nice contents. The beans combine very nicely with the fodder beets. I would have liked to have fed bean flour for longer, but unfortunately they have already run out.'

The field beans were harvested on August 2 and stored in boxes. Ruben had the beans ground and fed 180 kg of bean meal per day in the feed mixer. The bean flour contains on average 270 - 320 grams of RE and 350 - 400 grams of starch.

Good milking from own feed
Ruben clearly sees the results of his efforts and that is what drives him. 'Yes, this gives me real pleasure at work: a lot of milking from feed that we grow here ourselves, the cows that do very well on it and milk well. With the fresh fodder beets and the bean meal we have increased from almost 17 to more than 19 kg ds roughage intake at the feed fence. Tarine fodder beet seed has therefore been ordered for 2020, and a new plot of more than 3 hectares winter field beans looks good on it already.'

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