Dairy farming: Fodder haul helps confidence
IT HAS been almost 10 years since Ted Bingham has stored as much fodder as he has planned this season.
IT HAS been almost 10 years since Ted Bingham has stored as much fodder as he has planned this season.
The Lardner dairy farmer with wife Deborah and farm manager Connie Parkes have cut the equivalent of 3000 wet tonnes for pit silage, plus bales and plan to cut again later this week.
Early last week the farm received 23mm of rain.
“The weather is perfect for growth now,” Ted said.
“Since April it has been as good as I’ve ever seen it, but it was a very dry summer.
“From April on, it has been just a dream.”
The Lion suppliers say they are looking forward to storing the most fodder they have cut for almost a decade.
“Comfortable,” Connie said when asked how it felt to have a good amount of feed on hand.
“Now we will be able to work back some debt because we don’t have to buy feed.”
The herd has another “full rotation and a half” before there’s not adequate feed from the pastures, Connie said.
“Last year we fed silage before Christmas, now we won’t be feeding until Dairy Week (mid-January) or once it dries out (it can dry out quickly),” she said.
This year more than 90 per cent of the 174ha milking area was re-sown due to damage from black beetles, cockchafers and the drought.
It was sown in equal amounts of italians, perennials and annuals with an average blend cost of $5 a kilogram.
“We started from scratch this year,” Ted said.
“It was expensive, but it was money well spent.”
Connie said they sowed saia oats in some paddocks to try to stop the cycle of the cockchafers and this was 50 per cent successful.
Milking up to 500 cows, there were 440 in the herd last week, they calve about 400 cows in the autumn.
Producing about 1.95kg of milk solids/cow/day the herd is fed a ration of 4.8kg/cow/day of barley with 200 grams of canola.
They have a goal of producing 4 million litres this year and believe they are on track to reach this.
The farm also operates as a trial site for Cropmark Seeds.
Ted said Kai perennial ryegrass was popular with the herd, with the cows running straight to the plot and “eating it to the ground”.
He says he won’t be sowing it anytime soon though as it is not for his drier country, better suited to irrigation farms.
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