The solution for medium and large scale farms

Optimising Feed Efficiency
by Martin Mulholland, Greenmount Campus, CAFRE

The average dairy herd in Northern Ireland is yielding 7000 litres per cow per year. Over the winter 60% of the cows yield less than 25 litres. These cows have lower response rates to concentrates than fresh calved, high yielding cows. On farms where there are adequate stocks of good quality silage, concentrate feeding to late lactation and lower yielding cows could be reduced by 30 to 90 tonnes over the next 3 months, especially on farms where diet feeder wagons are used. This is a saving in feed costs of £5,000 to £15,000. These savings can be made through a combination of grouping cows according to milk yield and / or adjusting feed allocation between the forage wagon and the milking parlour. At a time when returns from dairying are being squeezed, take the opportunity to reduce your costs of production.

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