Save on expensive feed by adopting cake-to-yield method

”Milk per cow has only modestly risen but, over the same timespan, milk from forage has dropped significantly from 2,797 litres in 2004, to 2,168 litres by 2009,” he says (see table below). “Worse still, milk from grazed grass has plummeted from 1,632 litres to 811 litres last year.”

Concentrates have filled this gap on some farms, but the cost of other purchased feeds – such as moist feeds – has increased by 313 per cent between 2000 and 2009. And total feed cost per litre has more than doubled since 2000 and increased by 2.7 pence per litre since 2005.

Mr Rose says there are four factors contributing to this situation.

1. Striving for higher yield

“Higher yields can only be sustained by ensuring cows achieve higher dry matter intakes by improving forage quality and/or feeding more concentrates,” he says, pointing out that poor summer weather has also reduced forage quality, placing even more reliance on purchased feed.

2. Lower fertiliser use

Mr Rose says fertiliser use (N, P and K) has reduced on all grassland, with 55kg/ha N used in 2008 compared to 77kg in 2004. This has been at the same time as cow numbers have increased, often on the same acreage, putting more pressure on forage availability and milk from forage.

“Remember, the response to nitrogen on grass swards is typically 23kg DM per 1kg nitrogen, which makes the cost of growing this extra dry matter around £30 per tonne DM -– very competitive compared to bought-in moist feeds at more than £100 per tonne DM, for example,” he says.

“On some fields high pH or low phosphate and potash status may be limiting production, so regular soil analysis is strongly recommended to achieve optimum forage yields.”

3. Change in feeding systems

“Over the last decade there has been a steady rise in use of feeder wagons, enabling more concentrates and other purchased feeds to be fed,” says Mr Rose.

“This has increased milk yield, but not necessarily the efficiency of purchased feed use – particularly if the whole herd is fed one TMR diet with no parlour or out-of-parlour concentrates.

“This challenge becomes even more acute at grass. For many mid- and late-lactation cows grazed grass and two parlour feeds of cake, achieves maximum milk from gazed grass and the most efficient use of concentrates.

“Feeding expensive conserved forage and a fixed level of concentrates to all cows is bound to be less efficient. It is quite a different story for high yielding cows at grass where buffer feeding with conserved forage and concentrates becomes progressively more important as yields rise.

“Dairy farms feeding concentrates via the parlour or out-of-parlour feeders, which precisely target concentrates to the cows that need them, typically have better feed conversion efficiency than one/two-group TMR-fed herds with no individual concentrate allocation.”

4. Poor fertility

Mr Rose says an extended calving index not only reduces milk output per annum but also feed conversion efficiency, especially when cows are group-fed a base diet higher than their yield deserves.

But even given those four issues, Mr Rose says chasing yields at the expense of producing milk from forage, is not the right way.

“With lower and more volatile milk prices, looking at a different balance between yield and milk from forage with a simpler system may be more sustainable,” he says.

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