Focus Day November 21 2018
26/10/2018
Last Owl Farm Focus Day
Wednesday 21 November 2018
87 attendees heard about a World Markets update from Westpac Economist Anne Boniface.
The information discussed is in the Westpac Fortnightly Agri-update. Impacts of global demand and supply, what's really happening plus the impact and potential changes in the strength of the kiwi dollar.
Maximising Summer Performance was discussed in a Workshop session sharing ideas on tactics and trigger points to hit key targets.
the topics for consideration involved:
- How do you deploy your supplementary feeds over the next 4 months - what factors need to be considered, e.g. setting aside sialge for spring and winter, and keeping some for the Autumn rains. How much PKE can be fed and still manage your FEI, how does this change your approach to feeding?
- What do you do about rotation length? Great discussion around when to extend it, what a good target is, and the need to be flexible in response to changing pasture growth.
- When would you use OAD on the farm, for all or part of the herd and how do you manage the process?
- Lastly, the theme through all of the topics was around flexibility and monitoring. Growth rates will have an impact on most of the decisions above, and we need to remain flexible with all of the topics ot ahcieve a great outcome. Starting with a plan of what we expect growth to be will help us easily identify if we are off track.
Current Season Update
Less cows are making more milk, 94% of the herd submitted in 3 weeks of AB, 4 times last year’s spring silage made. Holding cows over 2kgMS/cow/day has been a standout highlight of the season with less brought0in feed used to achieve this. Having strong decision rules around how we wanted to oerate the farm was a key to seeing these results.
Key decision rules Sep - Oct
- Keep pre-graze under 3,000kgDM/ha
- Area grazed constant around 6.5ha/day. 17-22 day round of area available to graze
- Back the farm to grow – put the surplus in the stack
- Focus on next round quality – cows must work to graze to 1600 or less.
- Mower fixes any allocation errors where residuals were higher
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