Watch: reducing concentrate feeding in Down

Concentrate feed levels on Bill Brown’s farm near Millisle, Co Down, continued to decrease during 2017, while only a slight reduction was seen in milk yield. Last year, yield per cow stood at 8,210 litres from 2,101kg concentrates.

This represents a 9.1% decrease on concentrate feeding from 2016 levels and a 29.4% drop since Bill started in the Dairylink Ireland programme three years ago.

The significant drop in concentrate feeding has taken place while milk yield reduced by only 690 litres over the three-year period. This is seen in milk from forage figures, which have increased by 55% from 2,284 litres in 2014 to 3,541 last year.

Bill has delivered more milk from forage by putting a strong emphasis on improving utilisation of grazed grass. The high concentrates feed rate was having a negative effect on the utilisation and subsequent quality of grass on his farm.

Achieving better grass utilisation is not without cost and, as Figure 2 below shows, Bill continued to invest in developing the grazing platform last year by constructing laneways and a bridge to give cows access to more grazing ground.

Investment has also gone into growing more grass through targeted use of compound fertilisers and lime. Bill has also been addressing underperforming swards, with 22 acres reseeded last year. Growth in 2017 increased by a further 0.6t DM/ha to 14.8t DM/ha.

Components

Although milk yield per cow reduced on a volume basis, milk solids per cow increased last year as better grazing management optimised grass quality and increased milk protein levels to 3.28%. A lesser factor in the increase in milk components last year was the purchase of 20 cows in August that had high EBIs for butterfat and protein.

The value of milk quality payments to the business is 0.63p/l over the litres produced in 2017, which equates to £8,836 over the year. This is a significant increase from 2016 when component payments were worth around £1,240.

On the financial side, 2017 proved a good year for the business, with average milk price up by over 8p/l from 2016 levels to 28.1p/l. Income from milk sales stood at £378,712 and total receipts from milk and stock sales, but excluding CAP payments, stood at £416,786. Improved financial performance last year meant Bill paid for all the investments outlined in Figure 2 from cashflow.

With capital investments totalling £42,686, farm working expenses standing at £274,280 and drawings of £30,000 assumed for all Dairylink project farmers, Bill had £69,820 available in 2017 for loan repayments, taxation and additional personal drawings.

What’s next for Bill Brown?

Concentrates are my largest farm working expense and investing in grass to reduce concentrate feeding has been money well spent. Cost of production has reduced and last year stood at 21.1p/l, excluding drawings and capital expenditure paid for from cashflow.

There is some work still to do in developing grazing infrastructure, with more laneways to be constructed to bring ground into the grazing block that was previously used for silage and heifer rearing.

Breeding for improved fertility and milk components in the herd is the main longer-term focus.

Two years ago, we moved away from breeding purebred Holstein Friesian cows to using sires with some British Friesian genetics, and more recently KiwiCross and Jersey sires have been used.

We have tightened the calving profile over the past few years to have 85% of the herd calving between 10 September and 5 January. This has developed a seasonal labour requirement and made heifer rearing more straightforward. It also meant cows with fertility issues were not used to breed replacements or were culled.

Nucleus

There is also a spring group of Jersey-cross heifers which were purchased as calves and are calving from 22 January to 10 February.

This group is being used to create a nucleus within the herd to improve milk components, with the group predicted to deliver 4.5% butterfat and 3.7% protein.

Concentrate feed rate has reduced from 0.33kg/litre in 2014 to 0.26kg/litre last year.

Although we still want efficient use of concentrates in the future, the aim is to have cows that deliver 8,000 litres from 2t of concentrates, so we are not far away.

However, there could be room to reduce concentrate feed levels in heifer rearing. Last year, 28.3t of concentrates were purchased for replacement heifers and by early December most heifers were above the target breeding weight of 370kg to 380kg.