There will be a new trap if you want one.
depending on size of cow, grass rats are 450-500kg, hols 600-700 kg, big big difference. Coming rapidly to the conclusion grass rats are viable in large herds, or debt free, aiming for somewhere in between, 550/600 and around 7/7500 liters of quality milk, is a good compromise.Yeah, about 1.1 'cows' to the acre, it really depends on the size of the cows as much as a lot of other factors!
Big cows take a lot of feed to maintain, especially if it's "rocket fuel" as is the fashion, and the higher rate of replacement that goes with it then drops the effective cow carrying capacity - because the extra replacements take up more space .
Tricky to optimise all things but about a cow/ac plus ⅕ of a heifer plus ⅕ of a calf, if you've got good effective rainfall.
Doesn't really matter how much if it's effective, within reason.
Not a bad residual there, obviously "what happens next" is the thing, but I like to let new grass just get a couple of toppings like that for the first year or even two - you get it all back down the road, especially deeper rooting plants, they need to build that
Huge difference, eh?
and still plenty of green to catch the sunshinePretty much every straw I have picked has been minus on stature and maintenance.
Good dense sward there tooThis is what I like to see, proper plops.View attachment 952331 I thought they may have been a bit tight but still had to wait for them to stand up, passed the moo test
I think that's the balance, between cows, grass, time and plans we have?
. Some older grass?
Grass rats are viable with debt too. When a ROC is needed, grass rats can comfortably do 25%
not saying they are not, they are. Where they fall down, is cull calf prices, and lower yields, which mean to get the same income, you need a bigger herd, and many that spout forth about them, tend to be 300 + cows. Smaller acres and herds, can not get that bulk quantity, and really need a bit extra milk, calf and cull value, to compensate, it's total dairy income, or put another way, like sheep, it's a numbers game. We all have to 'do the sums' to get a figure that works on each farm. Perhaps following that thought, 25 hols, completely molly coddled, giving 20,000 litres, is the answer, for us, cull and calf value certainly helps, and we do sell milkers, fresh, that is a good earner, just sold 46, £62,000, to pay for 65 coming in, a one off chance to enlarge the autumn block, at cull value, had to be done, chances like that, do not occur, twice, so more fr cows, less jerx jer, and monkey bred, more milk, better cull/calf value, but it's all a balance.
i look for - stature, + chest, and, + body, the body, to make max use of food intake, bigger = more food =more milk from forage. lt's suprising how many fr bulls, are marketed without those figures, and, we need to know them. The good/bad old hol, will produce the 'right' bull first, in fact they have the bulls now, looking through the catalogues, like you, + milk, though it shouldn't make any difference, probably even better, taking milk potential of cows, they should be giving 15,000, with all the +milk bulls used. We have used NR, fine, good cows, and fr are, as well. The best cross, undoubtfully, is 1st jersey x holstien, 2nd x'es and more, just are not the same, and that leads to 3 or 4 way x'es, definitely losing something, along the way.
Yes, it's probably been reseeded in the past 20 years but most of that has run out, thankfully, and the older stuff is really getting into gearGood dense sward there too
there's quite a bit of PRG and cocksfoot and then a bit of Fog, Dogstail, fescue, browntop - what we call "survival grass"
got a few short lane wires pulled out after laying the 40mm, lovely working with nice light shiny wire. Pipe held water too, no leaky joiners is a big relief.
9 years ago mrs onsiedale went on a group study tour to NZ. One of the outstanding visits was to Rakia farms- a business that had been built from scratch to total 7000 OAD cows in several herds.
must admit, cant quite get my head round oad, if you get 4000 litres of milk oad, and you can get 5500 tad....Friend of ours was milking 170 mainly flech xs oad, organically, av about 3000 litres, for various reasons, he installed 2 robots, the last parlour tank, to the first robot tank, doubled the litres, and rose to 7000 cow, same quality. We had a chap come to buy some cows, for oad, he wanted hol type cows, giving 35 litres plus, then backed out, because they were not milky enough
@devonshirekiwi might know more about Rakia Farms having milked close to Ashburton.
No idea, I have heard of that group but I'm not really in the loop.
That's smart bodgineering David