Regardless of the feeding strategy utilised, efficient herd feeding is a critical aspect affecting dairy farm profitability. According to Dairy Australia, increasing the supply of home-grown feed is critical.
Research from throughout the globe, including Australia, has consistently shown a correlation between greater amounts of home-grown feed and better profitability. This is true independent of the farm’s feeding strategy or degree of intensity.
Dairy Australia underlines that, in the great majority of circumstances, locally produced feed is less expensive than imported or purchased feed. Maximising the production and exploitation of this resource is thus crucial to the sustainability of agricultural companies. Improving the resilience and profitability of agricultural systems requires increasing the production of home-grown feed.
Dairy Australia has produced a data sheet outlining the five most frequent feeding techniques used on dairy farms in Australia. Despite the fact that farms tend to get more intense from system 1 to system 5, there is a common misconception that home-grown feed is less important in more intensive systems.
“This is incorrect,” Dairy Australia points out, “as most successful examples of system 5 – where cows are fully housed – still grow a large percentage of their feed as home-grown feed, often as high-quality conserved forage such as maize silage or similar.”
Supplements are quite lucrative.
According to Dairy Australia, no system is superior to others, and all systems may be successful. Choosing the correct system for your farm will be primarily determined by the resources available and your risk tolerance.
On Australian dairy farms, home-grown feed seldom meets all of the feed gaps, thus supplements are employed. If utilised appropriately and effectively, they may be quite rewarding.
Dairy Australia has also prepared a ‘Designing balanced milker diets’ information sheet, which details how to optimise milk revenue minus feed costs in the herd and aids in the design of high-quality, nutritionally balanced milker diets.
Dairy Australia emphasises the need of farmers calculating cows’ daily food requirements. Cows need nutrient-dense diets for maintenance, pregnancy, exercise, growth, reproduction, and milk production. Although water, calories, protein, and fibre are the most important elements to consider when designing a diet, minerals and vitamins should not be overlooked.
Dairy Australia advises dairy farmers to consider several factors when selecting feeds to use in milker diets, including nutrient specifications, price, consistency of supply and quality, expected losses during storage (shrinkage), mixing and feed-out, increased capital requirements, extra labour required to handle, and other costs.
Farmers must determine the daily nutritional needs of their cows. Ronald Hissink is the photographer.
Farmers must determine the daily nutritional needs of their cows. Ronald Hissink is the photographer.
Milk earnings minus feed costs
The nutritional properties of feeds may vary greatly. The best approach to determine a feed’s nutritional properties is to get a feed test analysis. “High forage quality is paramount when designing diets for milking dairy cows,” states Dairy Australia. “Forage quality has a significant influence on feed intake because it is defined by its percentage of neutral detergent fibre [NDF] and NDF digestibility values.” The reaction to concentrates and diets is driven by forage quality.”
When developing a diet, farmers should consider three factors:
NDF digestibility and forage NDF percentage
The digestibility of starch in the rumen
Protein content and rumen degradability
According to Dairy Australia, an excess of nutrients may harm cow health, diminish feed conversion efficiency (kg of milk per kg of feed), and reduce milk revenue minus feed cost. “On the other hand, severe underfeeding will have an impact on performance as well as cow health and fertility.” It may take many cycles to balance the major components of a diet and discover a diet that is within the cow’s hunger limit and provides the highest potential milk revenue minus feed expense.”
Milk revenue less feed costs is a valuable indicator, according to Dairy Australia, especially when there is little or no pasture available. “It tells you how much of your milk income remains after you’ve paid for feed.” This sum must include running expenses such as herd, shed, labour, and administrative expenditures, as well as your finance and capital costs, including drawings.”
Efficiency evaluation
Farmers that feed a substantial quantity of purchased feed must obtain a high daily milk output per cow in order to get a higher milk revenue minus feed expense. The greater the milk output, the lower the proportion of unproductive money, that is, money spent on cow upkeep rather than milk production and income generation.
According to Dairy Australia, the concepts of marginal vs average milk output response are particularly important to grasp when administering supplements to optimise profit. The incremental increase in milk supply produced from an additional kilogramme of supplement provided is known as marginal milk response. The increase in milk supply averaged across all kilogrammes of supplement provided is referred to as the average milk response.
Dairy Australia believes it is critical to monitor the efficiency with which feed is transformed into milk since feed costs such a substantial amount of variable and total expenses on a dairy farm. Feed conversion efficiency (FCE) is a major indicator of a dairy farm’s feeding system performance, influencing feed cost per unit of milk and milk operational profit.
FCE is another major component that influences a farm’s greenhouse gas emissions. “FCE should always be used in conjunction with other farm physical and financial performance measures such as annual milk operating profit and return on assets,” Dairy Australia advises.
FCE is defined as the quantity of milk produced per kilogramme of feed fed to the herd. FCE for the milking herd may be calculated yearly or periodically throughout each year. “FCE is a useful form of measurement for monitoring the efficiency of a feeding programme,” according to Dairy Australia. “However, it should not be associated with farm profit too closely because it does not account for the cost of feed consumed by the herd.” FCE is useful in determining the quality of feed ingested by the herd, especially the forage component of the diet, since greater FCE is linked with better quality diets.”
