Growing more grass - to get more for less

Date: 2009-10-28 | Category: Dairy News

Farm location: Waerenga, near Te Kauwhata
Owners: John and Laureen Thurlow / Andrew and Sarah Thurlow
Area: 120ha plus 30ha drystock/support block
Dairy: 24 bail rotary
Herd: 400 pedigree Ayrshire, split calving
Production 2008/9: 137,000kg milksolids (MS)
Production target 2009/10: 155,000kg MS.

Andrew, Sarah and Jayden Thurlow with some of the herd.

Te Kauwhata dairy farmer Andrew Thurlow is aiming to increase production by 13 percent this season while at the same time reducing the quantity of bought-in supplement.The goal for 2009/10 is 1300kg milksolids (MS)/ha, compared with the district average of around 800kg, which the Thurlows hope to achieve while keeping costs down to $2.90/kg MS.

So how are they going to manage this? By doing things differently to grow more grass and produce cheap supplements on-farm.

“Our aim is to achieve self-sufficiency and not rely on bringing in feed from outside,” said Andrew.

He and wife Sarah are milking 400 pedigree Ayrshires on a milking platform of 120ha effective at Waerenga, just outside Te Kauwhata. The farm was established by Andrew’s grandfather Harry Thurlow, who bought the original 52 acres in 1936, and started the Ayrshire herd.

Andrew and Sarah came back to the farm in 1998, and in 2003 they formed a 50:50 family partnership, buying a neighbouring property of 52ha to bring the farm up to its present size. Since then cow numbers have increased gradually from 200 to 400, and Andrew has taken over running the farm from his father John.

Sarah, who comes from a dairy farm in Matamata, doesn’t have much direct involvement on the farm, having her hands full with the couple’s children, four-yearold daughter Ashley and 17-month-old son Jayden. However she runs the office, looking after all farm administration and accounts.

The property’s clay soils are heavy and can get really wet in winter, so to support their stocking rate of 3.3 cows/ha the Thurlows have built two Herd Homes, each with 200-cow capacity. The cows come off the paddocks as soon as they have been effectively grazed, which prevents pugging and allows the pasture to recover quicker. They feed supplements in the Herd Homes and also use a feed pad when they have extra mobs.

With a relatively high stocking rate (the district average is around 2.5) the Thurlows had previously brought in significant quantities of feed. Last year, this was 180 tonne of maize silage and 240t of palm kernel, in addition to the 200t maize silage and 70ha of grass silage grown on farm.

The Thurlows’ springer mob.

Potatoes

This year for the first time Andrew has added potatoes in to the system and has brought in 300t, which he hopes will allow him to cut out the palm kernel and also may cut back on the maize.

For the past six years the Thurlows have had an active grass renewal programme, with 10ha going in to maize each year and being resown with a tetraploid ryegrass mix. Andrew estimates around half the farm has been regrassed over this period, and last year he under sowed the other half with an annual ryegrass. One of the challenges he faces is the dry summers. “We get real summer dry here, and grow nothing from early January until March,” he said.

Last year he experimented with sorghum, a sub-tropical plant widely used in Australia and South Africa, which requires very little moisture but needs warm soil temperatures. The decision to plant the crop was accidental, because he’d left it too late to plant turnips. But Andrew was blown away by the results.

“We normally grow 12t of pasture/ha/ year,” he said.

“Last year we grew 12t of sorghum/ha from December to April. It made me take a serious look at how we could use it in our system.”

At around 24 percent, Andrew said, the sorghum has the same amount of dry matter (DM) as grass, and metabolisable energy (ME) levels similar to grass silage, though these can drop down to 9 megajoules (MJ) as the crop gets taller.

Last year he used a cut-and-carry approach, which meant it took up to 12 days to get through a hectare. This year he plans to change the approach and simply cut and stack it.

“We should get three cuts off it, one every 40 days, which should take the yield up to 15t/ha,” he said.

Learning from last year’s experience, he plans to plant earlier this year, and will put in a total of 20ha of sorghum in early December rather than in the week before Christmas. The cultivars he uses are BMR and Sugargraze. While sorghum can be direct-drilled, Andrew opts for full cultivation to improve the yield. “They recommend you put on diammonium phosphate (DAP) when you plant it, but I just used effluent from the Herd Home and worked that into the paddock, which keeps costs down” he said.

He also does most of his own cultivation, using contractors only for harvesting. In the stack, sorghum (Sugargraze) works out at around the same cost as maize silage, but the advantage is that it is in the ground for a shorter time, allowing more time to grow grass between crops. And getting more out of their pasture is also key to the Thurlows’ production target.

“We are using an annual ryegrass called Feast II on 20ha, which will grow 9t/ha from April to October, then we’ll put 10 ha in to maize,” he said.

“The remaining 10ha will be put back in to sorghum in December – by which time the grass should have yielded 12t/ha.”

Flat contour

To achieve these yields, Andrew needs to get soil fertility right, but is doing so as cost-effectively as he can. The flat contour means effluent from the Herd Homes and pond storage has been spread on threequarters of the farm this year using a slurry tanker.

“I don’t know how much fert I’ll need to apply on top of that, as I’m just waiting for the soil test,” he said.

Two Herd Homes support a stocking rate of 3.3 cows/ha.

“Hopefully just a bit of super and some nitrogen (N).”

They used to apply poultry manure, but have decided this may not be so costefficient and are going to try spraying dilute urea rather than applying it as granules.

“We should be able to halve our application rate from 200 units of N to 100, and still get the same response,” he said.

Applied strategically

The urea will be applied strategically from September to December and March to May, and over the winter he will follow the cows with two applications of ProGibb. He estimates the combined effect will be to lift pasture growth to 15-16t/ha.

“It’s all about trying something a bit different. And I guess there’s a bit of Kiwi ingenuity in there too.”

Sarah agreed they share a willingness to give things a go.

“If you don’t experiment, you’ll get left behind.”

However, both agree that their decisionmaking has been supported by research and talking to other members of the farming community.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for other people,” Andrew said. “Farmers tend to be very open and happy to give advice freely to other farmers, whereas in other industries you’d have to pay for it.”

He cites Hamilton dairy farmer Henry Hendriks (Dairy Exporter, June 2007, page 82) as being an example of what could be achieved in terms of pasture production, which got him thinking how he could increase his own production. Sarah added that talking to experts and people you trust before going in to something new has made them more confident about making those decisions.

The Thurlows have a split calving herd with around 25 percent of cows calving from 1 April and the remainder in mid-July. The winter milk contract has helped with cashflow, and they have decided not to supply colostrum this season.

“We did it last year but we had a bad run of calf scours and deaths, which may have been partly due to reduced colostrum,” Andrew said.

“Also, with the split calving we were sometimes struggling to meet the minimum requirements.”

Calf health this year has been much better, with only two cases of scours so far. According to Sarah, the Thurlows will achieve their target of 155,000kg MS this season through a combination of “better systems and fantastic staff”. They now have two fulltime employees, Stephan, who has been with them for 18 months and is now herd manger, and assistant herd manager, Noel, who started in July. Andrew runs a roster system so that one milks in the morning, another in the afternoon and the person, who is not milking that day, feeds out. They each get a three-day weekend off every third week, even during calving.

Andrew is looking forward to the rest of the season.

“Everything is starting to come together after a few years of hard work and trying to push the boundaries.”

Published courtesy of Dairy Exporter October 2009

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