Anton and Arjan Stokman milk 280 cows through four Lely milking robots on their farm near Koudum in the north of the Netherlands. This farm is trying to stay ahead of the challenges that lie ahead for Dutch farmers. It’s almost 19 years since the first two robots were installed on the farm.

Anton starting farming in 1978 and has gradually built the business up to where it is today – milking 280 cows, 2.8 times a day, from 130ha farmed. Most of the land is around the cow shed, with heifers contract-reared away from the farm. Anton operates the contract-rearing by selling the calves out and buying them back in on the point of calving.

The big question I had when visiting the farm was how will new Dutch environmental rules affect it? Anton is already doing a number of things to manage his situation. He is exporting 5,000 cubic metres of slurry at a cost of €45,000 (€160/cow) each year to stay within nutrient limits.

Given the relatively poor milk price, Anton is availing of the incentivised milk reduction scheme from FrieslandCampina (FC) which started in October. At the moment, FC is topping up the EU 14c/litre reduction compensation money with 10c/l of its own money in order to reduce supplies into the company. Anton is availing of this and has already sold off 30 cows to reduce milk supply during October to December.

Will the Stokmans have to reduce cow numbers in January 2017? In July 2015 (reference period), they were milking 300 cows. Now they are milking 270, so they won’t have to reduce cows anymore. To counteract the lower numbers, they will try to increase yield per cow, so total milk sold might not fall that much.

Anton said he will consider feeding low-phosphorus feeds, but he had trouble with doing this before, with some cows dying. He is contracting out his young stock, so the slurry problems these create are not his problem as they count on his contract-rearing farm.

What he will do next year should more stringent environmental rules come into existence? “There is the possibility that dairy farmers may be able to buy phosphate rights. Already farmers have been given some preliminary figures from advisers which suggest that maybe you will be able to buy phosphate rights for €5,000/cow. If this was the only additional expense, it might be worthwhile. If you consider all other expenses [parlours, cows, sheds, etc] have been already encountered so it could be a good investment. Obviously, it would be a cost to be repaid over seven to eight years. These would come from farmers exiting farming.”

The Netherlands has exceeded a national ceiling of 172.9m kg of phosphate production for the last year and is predicted to do the same for 2016 and 2017.

Anton feels the national ceiling for phosphate (172.9m kg) is not adjusted for the phosphate that is exported from Netherlands. There is no environmental reason for the national ceiling but no account is taken of this in the phosphate balance debate.

He also suggests many dairy farms are 85% adequate in terms of land availability for the slurry they produce, but other sectors such as the pig industry might have little or no land for slurry produced yet everyone has to suffer as a result.

Feed story

The feed story on this farm is interesting when you compare the figures with a typical Irish farm and goes some way to explaining the nutrient loading on Dutch farms.

If we assume the dry matter intake of these cows while milking is in the order of on average 22kg to 23kg DM/cow for 323 days in milk, then the intake requirement is in the order of 7t per cow. Assuming a dry period intake of 15kg per cow for 42 days, that’s another 600kg DM as dry cow feed. So, in total, the DM intake requirements of these cows is about 7.6t per cow per year. Remember, these are high-producing Holstein cows (over 10,000 litres per lactation) with bodyweights over 700kg.

Every year, Anton buys in 1,500t of maize silage for about 310 livestock units. That’s about 525kg DM/cow/year. Divided by the 310 livestock units, that’s 1.7t DM/cow purchased as maize silage per year. Cows on this farm are consuming about 2,500kg of concentrate per cow on average. In total, this means about 775t of concentrate are purchased. Grass silage is cut five to six times per year from a good proportion of the farm.

When all is totalled up, it means about half the diet is purchased as concentrate and maize silage – about 4.2t DM/cow. The balance of the cow diet is made up from the 130ha available for making silage and grazing.

What it means is while the stocking rate figure is 310 livestock units on 100 effective hectares (3.41 LU/ha when you exclude tulip and natura hectares), the reality is half the diet is purchased into the farm. In Ireland, at these stocking rates, about 10% or less feed would be purchased into a farm.

The question for this farmer is can he make any more use of the asset that he has – his land base? Can he measure, manage, increase the feed produced from the farm to take some of the risk out of all the inputs purchased in?

This would also of course help the environmental debate that is ongoing, as less minerals and nutrients would be imported on to the farm which upset the balance with the environment.

Farm facts

Tulips’ high return

Every six years, Anton leases out some of his grassland area for tulip-growing. The return to the farm business is €3,500/ha and Anton uses it as part of his reseeding policy, with the tulips sown in October and harvested by July so grass seed can be drilled before the autumn.

Contract feeding

Anton has a feeding contractor who completes all his feeding work, charging ¤2.20/min. It takes the contractor 30 minutes to feed the 280 cows – he can feed over 14 herds in the locality.

Biogas

Anton has the cow shed kitted out to minimise slurry gas loss. It has a solid floor, with grooves in the concrete passages. To clean this, there are tongues in the scraper that sit into the grooves and pull the slurry to one end of the shed. Fresh slurry has 20% more gas for biogas if it’s managed and contained properly.

Solar panels on roof

Last year, Anton fitted out one whole side of his cow shed with PV panels at a cost of €220,000. Anton is connected to the grid, so he can sell surplus electricity for 13.5c/kW. The fact of the matter is 200,000kW are produced and 170,000kW are required for the farm (robots and milk-cooling mainly). It will take almost nine years to return funds invested, according to Anton.

Grazing outside

The cows on this farm graze during office hours. “They are allowed out to graze between 9am and 5pm during the summer months [May to September],” said Anton. The cows never go too far from the sheds/robots and hence only a very small proportion of the diet is coming from grazed grass.

Feed options

There are three sources of feed for milking cows – concentrate in the robot, TMR diet at the feed face and out-of-parlour feeders beside the cubicles. In the latter, there are four main concentrate types. One feed bin contains high-starch feed, one contains a high-protein feed, a real high-producing feed and then a cheap lower-quality feed. A pipe from each feed bin is fed to each out-of-parlour feeder. Individual cows will get a feed allocation depending on stage of lactation and production capacity.

Calf value

The farm has started using more beef (Belgian Blue) semen on mature milking cows than dairy semen as it is not in a dairy growth phase because of the impending phosphate restrictions. Dairy semen is used only on the maiden heifers and best milking cows. A Belgian Blue heifer (€100) or bull calf (€200) out of the dairy herd is making about €50 to €60 each.

Maize growing

In the past, all artificial nitrogen (bag nitrogen) would have been used when growing maize, but now cow slurry only is used on the farm that produces the maize for Anton. A big saving and much better use of nutrients.

Slurry exporting

Over 5,000 cubic metres of slurry is exported or used on the maize farm from this farm each year to stay within regulations. The cost is €45,000. Tighter environmental rules will push this cost higher. At 280 cows and 130ha, the size is big relative to the average. The average Dutch herd is about 90 cows and the average yield is about 8,000 litres per cow.

Milk yield

Yield per cow was 32l at 4.5% fat and 3.5% protein (2.63kg milk solids/cow/day).