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I was with a few discussion groups over the past week, where farmers were feeding high levels of meal (more than 2kg/cow). With a high milk price and a relatively low meal price, it’s a feed salesman’s dream.
However, most farmers don’t and won’t know what their herd’s response to concentrate is. In research trials, it is much less than a 1kg of milk to 1kg of meal response. Where grass quality is poor, the response will be higher, but improving grass quality by grazing the correct covers is a much more profitable endeavour.
The second issue is wasting grass. Feeding more than 2kg/cow will displace grass from the diet. This is great if you need to build up covers, but if grass is on target then you are wasting a good feed that costs a lot less than the meal.
Farmers that are feeding meal to build up covers must make sure they achieve their objective of increasing rotation length. It should be at 25 or 26 days now. Divide the desired rotation length into the total farm area, to give the area to be grazed per day and stick to this.
Peak milk cheque meets new costs
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