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With more own roughage to low costs
The challenge for lower-cost milk production is to harvest as much protein, energy and structure from our own land as possible. That means as few purchases of feed as possible in order to achieve a higher balance. In this article tips to milk with more yield.
There has been a lot of attention for improving roughage efficiency for some time now. This is not unjustified, because with roughage crops there is a so-called 'yield gap', a difference in yield between what the crops can achieve genetically on the basis of the tests and what is achieved in practice.
A recent scientific article describes the trends in yield of forage crops (siloma maize and perennial ryegrass) over time. The article discusses a study carried out within the PPP Roughage and Soil project group. Based on official research, the yield data of 40 years for perennial ryegrass and 25 years for silage maize have been analysed. The genetically determined increase in yield and any yield increase are plotted in practice. An annual increasing genetically determined yield of 173 kg ds/ha has been calculated for maize and 44 kg ds/ha for perennial ryegrass.
Improvement in crop management
The yield increase in practice over the years is lower for both maize and grass. This means that in practice the genetically determined yield cannot be achieved. There is therefore still room for improvement in the field of cultivation management. Another very important point of attention is climate change. The growing seasons are drier and warmer and less favorable for grass cultivation, especially on sandy soil. This of course has consequences for the yield.
It is very difficult for livestock farms on sandy soil to keep the roughage position with grass up to standard, let alone maintain it. This has direct consequences for the protein production from grass, so that protein must be purchased from outside the farm to meet the protein needs of the cattle. And that is precisely not the intention.
Dryer conditions
With the (new) reality of drought in mind, it will be necessary to really think about how the genetic yield of grass can be realized in practice. This without increasing the cost price for grass production even more as a result of more irrigation. As far as possible, given the many irrigation bans. Not an easy task, if not by giving other crops that use water more efficiently.
Reduce feed costs
In addition to the efficiency gain in yield improvement, there is also the possibility to be critical of feed costs and to look for options to reduce them. Those possibilities are there. Feed costs represent up to 50% of a dairy farm's production costs.
Farmdesk has been introduced to get a better grip on this. Using the Farmdesk software program, it is quite possible to reduce feed costs and increase margins.
The first livestock farmers have started working with the program enthusiastically and successfully. The ration module is very user-friendly, so farmers do not have to be a feed specialist to be able to work with the program. It is easy to calculate the rations for the cows, evaluate them at a glance and adjust if necessary.
With the help of Farmdesk, the loading lists for the feed mixer are made, and the total feed intake can be viewed daily on the smartphone. It is also easy to compare your own feed prices with prices from the market and to automatically read and display the milk production figures. The necessary feedback is provided via smart algorithms.
Insight into the numbers
With the milk figures and the feed intake in hand, monthly insight is obtained into the feed costs. It is also possible to compare the results with those of other Farmdesk users.
Additional new information is gathered through the monthly newsletters. When advice, support or information is desired, support can be provided by telephone, chat or on the basis of a personal visit by accredited Farmdesk specialists.
By optimizing the ration and maximizing your own feed cultivation, milk is produced at lower feed costs. In practice, that is the experience of Farmdesk users. A reduction of 2 cents per liter in feed costs quickly provides these companies with a net margin of €20.000. It is important that everything that a cow basically needs, namely protein, energy and structure and what comes from its own soil, is calculated in the program as much as possible.
Alternative fodder crops: a hype or the future?
Many alternative fodder crops are regularly reviewed in the media and are tested in practice on a small or slightly larger scale. Think of field beans, pole beans in combination with maize, peas, fodder beets, sorghum, soy, alfalfa, hemp. A very long list, in which the common denominator is the arable farming approach and 'cannot be added just like that'. This is often the problem in practice and that inevitably leads to disappointments: yields that are too low, quality that is too poor or even crop failures. Of these alternative crops, fodder beets are the only crop that grows in area on livestock farms or grown by arable farmers and then delivered to livestock farmers.
The modern fodder beet, also known as KWS Feedbeet, has a future in addition to grass and maize, because it has a high dry matter content and a higher dry matter yield compared to the old-fashioned fodder beet. In addition, the mechanization has not stood still in all those years and KWS Feedbeet can be harvested perfectly with conventional sugar beet harvesters. Experience in recent years has shown that in order for growers to achieve the highest yield, the beets have to stand until October-November. It is better to harvest them when the maize is also chopped. The best way of storing and feeding all year round is to slurp (also called dredging) the shredded beets in combination with a dry product such as soy hulls.
More space for grass
Livestock farmers who are forced to grow a lot of grass 'due to derogation', in some cases have to contend with grass surpluses. Because selling is not always useful and a cow knows how to handle protein from grass, the trick is to try to feed more of it. With the harvest of maize as corn cob silage (MKS), the proportion of starch per kilogram of dry matter increases considerably. As a result, maize changes from roughage to concentrate. To feed the same amount of energy to a cow, fewer kilograms of product are needed, which automatically creates space in the cow's rumen for more grass.
This allows dairy farmers to save feed costs and improve the feed balance. The maize straw that remains on the land is also 'food' for the soil. Livestock farmers who find the feeding of MKS too radical a solution can always opt for the 'intermediate solution', namely chopping the silo maize higher.
Extra protein with Fast Spring Rye
Livestock farmers who want to sow a catch crop that actually want to capture residual nitrogen and harvest protein in the spring have been able to sow Fast Spring Rye after the maize harvest for two years now. Fast Spring Rye quickly yields 600 to 1.100 kg of crude protein per hectare, when the cultivation advice is followed. In combination with maize, which is grown on the same plot, the protein yield is higher than that of one hectare of grass.
Improve efficiency
As part of the crop rotation, the cultivation of grass clover provides a welcome and attractive addition to the total protein production on the own farm.
Although it is well aware that it is not always easy, there are many opportunities for optimization of cultivation, harvest and ration to improve the return on the livestock farm. Your own regional KWS advisor will gladly help you with that!
