The above will be the most reliable, but they won't be working for 10 months of the year.
How much grass/day ? Staffing ? Silage routine ?Lets suppose its for a 200 cow robot herd so it will be used to the maximum.
The above will be the most reliable, but they won't be working for 10 months of the year.
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.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
Got to agree with you here, we are installing an additional feed barrier to give more spaceAlso cows were far dirtier feeding grass leading to higher risk of mastitis.
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 brainerZero 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.
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
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 thatVery 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.
How much you feeding at the mo ?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! View attachment 660938
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! View attachment 660938