Marginal Litres

[easy farming]

I would ask an LIC consultant or Cled Richards from Agri angels, Carmarthen, if that's your area.
If you have no seasonality and with Spring calving cows next April/ May you should get a good response.

 

[RJ1]

I would ask an LIC consultant or Cled Richards from Agri angels, Carmarthen, if that's your area.
If you have no seasonality and with Spring calving cows next April/ May you should get a good response.

We work with Cled, he's very good and has excellent data to draw on.

 

[easy farming]

We work with Cled, he's very good and has excellent data to draw on.

He's very practical, would almost certainly advise feeding some conc.

 

[Manney]

I've just watched this presentation. I can really relate to what he is saying as our profit has gone up since moving from tad to oad and dropping cow output.

When people ask why profit has gone up it's always a struggle to quantify what areas savings have been made in. It's a very difficult topic to explain but from my experience dropping marginal litres has increased profit.

 

[awkward]

On marginal litres, we moved start of calving form early February to March 1, doesn't sound like much but cows are on grass as opposed to silage and meals

 

[RJ1]

I've just watched this presentation. I can really relate to what he is saying as our profit has gone up since moving from tad to oad and dropping cow output.

When people ask why profit has gone up it's always a struggle to quantify what areas savings have been made in. It's a very difficult topic to explain but from my experience dropping marginal litres has increased profit.

Would you mind saying what the impact was on yield, concentrates and replacement rate? Less labour?

 

[easy farming]

I've just watched this presentation. I can really relate to what he is saying as our profit has gone up since moving from tad to oad and dropping cow output.

When people ask why profit has gone up it's always a struggle to quantify what areas savings have been made in. It's a very difficult topic to explain but from my experience dropping marginal litres has increased profit.

In our experience of going OAD I think it was the culling of passengers that was a big factor. On concentrates we only feed PKE, I am almost hoping that it will be banned by farm assurance as we would then go forage only, I don't know if we would be more profitable but it is one less forward buying decision to make and probably mean culling a few later calvers, raising the average days in milk and therefore yield of what's left.

 

[Manney]

Would you mind saying what the impact was on yield, concentrates and replacement rate? Less labour?

We've gone from 520kg solids per cow feeding 1200kg conc to 384kg solids per cow feeding 500kg conc.

Lower costs, better fertility, much more free time, less stress on cows and people, the system is less reliant on bought in goods, less machinery use..... The list goes on.

Not for everyone I know bit it works for us, our cows and our farm.

 

[DairyGrazing]

We've gone from 520kg solids per cow feeding 1200kg conc to 384kg solids per cow feeding 500kg conc.

Lower costs, better fertility, much more free time, less stress on cows and people, the system is less reliant on bought in goods, less machinery use..... The list goes on.

Not for everyone I know bit it works for us, our cows and our farm.

Whats happened to farm/cow/acre profit?

 

[easy farming]

Whats happened to farm/cow/acre profit?

We are similar production, whenever we compare ourselves to national numbers for profit/cow/ha we sit comfortably in the top 25%.
But as we do that with less capital employed our ROCE should be above average, and when it comes to investment ROCE and free cash flow are important metrics.

 

[Holsteinfriesian90]

We've gone from 520kg solids per cow feeding 1200kg conc to 384kg solids per cow feeding 500kg conc.

Lower costs, better fertility, much more free time, less stress on cows and people, the system is less reliant on bought in goods, less machinery use..... The list goes on.

Not for everyone I know bit it works for us, our cows and our farm.

You were mentioned at our tb test last week vet couldn’t believe your profit.

 

[Martyn]

It's really interesting iv been battling rubbish milk price and in many ways been forced to go down a lot lower input system than I had imagined 18 months ago.

Now that we are onto January and have 3/4 of our financial year to compare back with previous years our overall performance is becoming clearer.

We look to have reduced our purchased feed bill by 68%, our milk value sold is back by 22% but our profit per cow is lifted by £140 on previous two years.

It actually looks like it will turn out to be our most profitable year since we started which is really not what I was expecting.

 

[Manney]

I can guess who your vet is It is genuinely profitable but need a very different mindset to achieve.

 

[Holsteinfriesian90]

I can guess who your vet is It is genuinely profitable but need a very different mindset to achieve.

I can imagine. Sounds like your doing well off it though. What’s the thoughts on your breeding this year stick with British friesian or go more Irish friesian route?

 

[Manney]

I can imagine. Sounds like your doing well off it though. What’s the thoughts on your breeding this year stick with British friesian or go more Irish friesian route?

I've stuck with British fr, calving to sexed GTW this year and bought sexed GTW for next year. Might have a look at Irish fr if they start getting to chunky. I feel like I have a reasonable balance between milk solids, calf value and cull value.

 

[Martyn]

I've stuck with British fr, calving to sexed GTW this year and bought sexed GTW for next year. Might have a look at Irish fr if they start getting to chunky. I feel like I have a reasonable balance between milk solids, calf value and cull value.

We purchased some pure fr heifers 18 months ago incalf to Irish, the calves are now bulling heifers and they look like elephants and are totally nuts in comparison to our bf heifers in the same mob, the Irish literally climb gates walls etc!

 

[Martyn]

Does anybody struggle with growing profitability but struggling to cash generate. I guess the classic one is no cash, but lots of livestock so balance sheet look great but struggling to create cash to service bills.

This year has been very tight but very much over the biggest hump for us now. Looking forward to spring turn out and then once a day milking
.

 

[Jdunn55]

Does anybody struggle with growing profitability but struggling to cash generate. I guess the classic one is no cash, but lots of livestock so balance sheet look great but struggling to create cash to service bills.

This year has been very tight but very much over the biggest hump for us now. Looking forward to spring turn out and then once a day milking
.

Do you normally do once a day or is that something you're trying this year?

 

[Martyn]

Do you normally do once a day or is that something you're trying this year?

Have done for last 6 weeks befor drying off, but this years been a slog so iv promised my family we will do first grazing round on twice a day then once from then on. Also our contract has gone from liquid to solid based so I thing we will gain.