22 June, 2015

Thanks to all who attended our Dairy Seminar late last month which proved to be a very informative and educational evening. Special thanks to our speakers Dr. Dan Ryan from CowsDNA and Morgan Sheehy from Devenish Nutrition for their excellent presentations.

Dr. Dan Ryan’s presentation on Herd Health Optimisation highlighted the following:

• The 6 week breeding challenge

– 90% Submission rate – quite achievable

– 60% Pregnancy rate – quite achievable

– ?% Replacement rate – the ideal rate is 20% but this figure is much higher in practice. For example a 30% replacement rate would equate to the cost of approximately €14000 in a 2 year cycle for a herd size of 100.

• Future calf health is dependent on early embryo development and Dan stressed the importance of a balanced dry cow diet.
• Early embryo mortality is dictated by stressors pre and post breeding.
• Previous experiences affect expression of genetic potential.

Morgan Sheehy gave a comprehensive presentation on optimising feeding intake to increase productivity and reproductivity of the herd.

• Morgan introduced a new concept highlighting the importance of the nutritive value of grass and milk production.
• Conventional advisors make the assumption that all grass is the same. Morgan stresses that farmers should know the nutritive value i.e protein, fibre, sugar and digestability of the grass, hybrid grasses v’s weed grasses, vegetative (leafy) stage v’s reproductive (seeding) stage.
• Morgan described the use of Lactation Curve Graphs as an improvement tool for dairy herds. Lactation curves offer a quick visual check on herd production . Areas for possible improvement can be quickly identified, leading to management changes aimed at increasing profitability.
• Now that milk quotas are gone maintaining peak persistency will contribute greatly to profitability
• Milk yield reductions greater than 7% per month would indicate management issues.

Bandon Co-op are conscious that changing conditions in farms requires appropriate adaptation to the feed formulation.