The above will be the most reliable, but they won't be working for 10 months of the year.
Zero grazing.
- Thread starter Nh6050
- Start date
- Location
- M6 Hard shoulder
Depends how reliant you are on the tractor for other work, we have a small 105 hp older tractor that lives on the zg, because im lazy and cant be fudged unpegging kit at the most inconvenient times, have as big a machine as you can afford and manage so your doing as few loads as possible.
ollie989898
Member
Lets suppose its for a 200 cow robot herd so it will be used to the maximum.
- Location
- M6 Hard shoulder
How much grass/day ? Staffing ? Silage routine ?
Suckndiesel
Member
- Location
- Newtownards
Don’t think we could be doing what we are doing if we were only using a front mower and wagon
- Location
- Northern Ireland
I zero grazed for two seasons with my forage wagon and front mower. Too big and awkward for small fields. 50' from nose to tail. It carries well, but that really doesn't matter a damn when it rains five days a week.
Scholsey
Member
- Location
- Herefordshire
Just to try the tractor/wagon/mower out after it’s big service and some pretty major arse end surgery on the tractor.
Not sunk in just squelchy, and grass is clean that’s in front of the cows. Hopefully will get drier from now on.
Not sunk in just squelchy, and grass is clean that’s in front of the cows. Hopefully will get drier from now on.
Attachments
- Location
- North Devon
Always used to cut grass the night before and pickup with old forager and trailer on wide tyres unless heavy rain forecast overnight. Less heating and more sugars than cutting in morning.
Funny how things come back around. Zero grazed since 1982 but stopped 3 years ago. Just not enough milk in grass for high yielders. Helps boost intakes when only fed at low levels but then it’s a lot of work for very little
Funny how things come back around. Zero grazed since 1982 but stopped 3 years ago. Just not enough milk in grass for high yielders. Helps boost intakes when only fed at low levels but then it’s a lot of work for very little
- Location
- M6 Hard shoulder
Your post goes against everything we have found since zero grazing the last 2 years, grass needs cutting and feeding straight away to prevent spoilage and nutrient losses, we are currently feeding 50kg fresh grass/head and have seen an increase in milk of 2-3 litres whilst reducing meal usage to .25 kg/litre av 33litres at 190 dim. We are aiming to feed upto 60kg fresh. In my opinion zero grazed grass is the ultimate tmr for high yielding cows.
- Location
- North Devon
Zero grazing works far better than grazing but cows just can’t eat enough grass to produce high yields. It’s also to variable in feed value in poor weather conditions.
Below 10000 litres it can pay but we found once you cost in yield and milk quality losses it was worth about £10/day. Not worth our time and any breakdown would eat any profit instantly.
Below 10000 litres it can pay but we found once you cost in yield and milk quality losses it was worth about £10/day. Not worth our time and any breakdown would eat any profit instantly.
- Location
- North Devon
Also cows were far dirtier feeding grass leading to higher risk of mastitis.
- Location
- M6 Hard shoulder
Got to agree with you here, we are installing an additional feed barrier to give more space
jimmer
Member
- Location
- East Devon
I suppose it's that fine line between not achieving really high yields and economically produced high yields
- Location
- M6 Hard shoulder
its not always about high yields though surely if you can produce 9k and make it more profitably than 10 I would have thought its a no brainer
- Location
- North Devon
Very true which is why everyone has to look at their own costs. For us it doesn’t pay to drop yields. We had a rolling average of 13500 @ 4.2BF 3.6P. The losses in quality alone cost us over 2ppl.
- Location
- M6 Hard shoulder
If you were yielding that at those constituents how can you say zero grazing didnt work for you ? Those are mighty impressive figures, I would imagine you would have been a gold cup contender at that
Suckndiesel
Member
- Location
- Newtownards
Ground that I had planned to zero graze here is soaking (near got stuck spreading fertiliser on some of it yesterday) so cutting a bit of silage ground, be good if it was all as dry as this!
- Location
- M6 Hard shoulder
How much you feeding at the mo ?
Suckndiesel
Member
- Location
- Newtownards
Only started cutting again on Monday after 3 weeks off no cutting, so today they’re getting around 40% of their diet as grass. Sunday looks wet so might be stopped again next week!
....and you think that’s bad! Quad got stuck yesterday!!!!!! Can’t even get on to fence !!!!!!