Progress?

[Tarw Coch]

I was at the Welsh Agricultural College in the seventies and they had a low cost Spring calving herd at Frondeg, Blaenplwyf. They found that January/February calving gave the best return, along with feeding around a ton of concentrates, so that they yielded higher and grass could provide almost all nutrients for yield after turning out in late March or early April, whenever the weather allowed.
Back then of course they only yielded 5500 litres maximum in total even with the concentrates. About 4200 from grass. Which is just a bit less than I get today from grass with a more Autumn biassed, but all year round herd yielding 8500 litres.
So seventies performance just doesn't hack it today. Cows and general management have improved no end on the majority of farms, including those with Spring calving herds of course.

WAC has long gone as has the University's herd at Frondeg. It just couldn't be made profitable using paid labour over the last ten years. Instead they have a massive new unit at Trawscoed which is bleeding even more money and has nowhere near the number of cows originally planned for.

Wouldn’t your figures for a spring calving heard be somewhere near the mark today? 5500 litres, 4200 from forage ?
I know @lazy farmer runs a spring calving herd, he may be able to put us straight on expected performance but I was of the impression that a well run spring calving herd was as profitable as any other system, indeed possibly more profitable in times of low returns due to lower capital outlay.

 

[Cowabunga]

Wouldn’t your figures for a spring calving heard be somewhere near the mark today? 5500 litres, 4200 from forage ?
I know @lazy farmer runs a spring calving herd, he may be able to put us straight on expected performance but I was of the impression that a well run spring calving herd was as profitable as any other system, indeed possibly more profitable in times of low returns due to lower capital outlay.

Its quite possible that Spring calving herd performance hasn't altered much. I would suspect that would be because they use Friesian genetics rather than the far bigger body capacity and milky, though delicate Holstein genetics.
I'm quite sure that the retained profit could be quite similar, although £900 to £1000 worth of extra milk from an 8000 to 9000 litre herd, using around two tons of concentrates [an extra cost of say £250] pays for rather a lot of extra overheads.
Its the volume of milk and, on some contracts, the milk solids that bring in the income. Which is why very large herds are becoming more prevalent. The total income must come, whatever way its done. If people have the soil and climate to batch Spring calve and their contract doesn't penalise Spring milk too much, great, best of luck to them.

 

[Cowabunga]

Wouldn’t your figures for a spring calving heard be somewhere near the mark today? 5500 litres, 4200 from forage ?
I know @lazy farmer rindeed possibly more profitable in times of low returns due to lower capital outlay.

That's a ticklish one. Most of the ones around here have anything but a low capital outlay. They look to me, in comparison with my now decrepit old unit, to have a large capital outlay indeed. I can only speak for the ones I see locally of course and these would be the higher profile ones. I'm sure there are some who are running such units on a shoestring, but I don't know of one any longer.

 

[lazy farmer]

Hi, unfortunately block calvers can’t all be lumped under one litreage heading. The most profitable herds I hnow are OAD producing between 3200 and 4000 litres of very high solids milk .Of course if you measure per hectare others might be more profitable.
In our own case we produce around 6000 litres or just over 500kgs of what I am paid for.
In my mind their is no question block calvers of what ever type have systems that are most repeatable and profitable. Especially for tenanted units. on a hour worked basis I would challenge any none block calvers to give figure for hours worked per cow and profit per hour.
Here we run 270;ish cows and 130 other stock with 2.5 labour units. For 44 weeks. The other 8 wks its mor like 4.25 labour units.
For the last 4 days the farm ran perfectly well with 1.25 units. For the 8 weeks we are shut down the farm requires 4 hrs labour on most days.