New forage flags in early tests
Pearl millet off to uneven start as a dairy feed in OntarioBY DON STONEMAN
Forage pearl millet, the new annual forage crop highly touted as a rescue, is getting off to an uneven start as a dairy feed in Ontario. Farmers cite both harvesting difficulties as well as problems in getting it planted on time.Well-known and respected Holstein breeders, farmers and sales yard operators Walker Farms, south of Aylmer, planted 88 acres of pearl millet last year, using the exotic annual crop as a replacement for alfalfa on fields where the perennial is hard to maintain.
But a second crop didn't get in the ground this year, says manager Rudolph Martinez. The field was converted to other crops for management reasons, he says. They ran out of time to get the crop planted in the critical late-May, early-June window.
Forage pearl millet is not your average forage crop. Developed in the tropics, it can grow more than six feet high, but is best harvested at 2.5 feet. After that, protein content falls rapidly.
In tests conducted in eastern Ontario and in Quebec between 1995 and 1998, protein averaged 15 to 19 per cent on dry matter yields of three to six tonnes with 34 to 26 per cent ADF, and NDF of 65 to 66 per cent. Total digestible nutrients were 67 to 69 per cent, comparable to corn silage. Pearl millet isn't the easiest crop to grow, warns Bob Roy, farm operations manager at the Delhi Research Station. It isn't frost tolerant, and some had to be replanted at the Walker farm last year, despite a first planting in the first week of June. First cut was taken off early August, the second early September.
The first cut last year at Walker Farms was nine wet tonnes per acre at 70 per cent moisture, says plant scientist Ratna Sritharan, Agricultural Environmental Renewal Canada Inc. (AERC). The crop has been introduced into Canada and is being promoted by AERC, a private research company working closely with Agriculture Canada.
The second cut was 9.5 tonnes. It was stored in a bunk silo. Total dry matter per acre for the two cuts was 5.5 tonnes. Ratna says this compares favourably to corn silage yields that can be expected on the sandy loam soil in that area.
Protein levels were 13.2 per cent from the first cut and 12.9 per cent from the second cut, less than had been found in trials in eastern Ontario and in Quebec.
Liquid manure was spread at a rate of 20 tonnes per acre in the field immediately after the first cut. Ratna says the harvest was late and the protein levels in the feed were much lower than had been expected from field trials. Total digestible nutrients in the dry crop had been as high as 67 to 70 per cent.
Walker Farms' Martinez says the crop made fine feed for Holstein heifers. "They grew well enough on it," he says. But at those protein levels, the forage doesn't pack enough protein punch to be the main forage in rations for dairy cows.
Furthermore, Martinez says, the crop is difficult to handle. The equipment on the farm was too large, the windrows were too big. It was hard on the harvesting equipment, he says.
Another farmer who grew pearl millet for a couple of years agrees, and has also taken it out of cropping plans, is John Ysselsteine, who grows and freshens between 500 and 600 heifers south of Woodstock.
Ysselsteine planted about 30 acres of the crop in 1996 and 1997. He had been frustrated with heavy alfalfa winterkills. Ysselsteine says yields and protein were adequate at 18 to 19 per cent, but it was a difficult crop to harvest. Lawrence Trepanier, Belterre Seeds, La Salette, near Delhi, markets seed for the exotic new crop. He estimated that seed for 2,700 acres was sold in western Ontario, and probably another 300 acres in the east. "We have sold a lot for forage," he says, but unable to make an estimate of the amount.
Forage pearl millet has widespread applications among vegetable, tobacco and ginseng farmers as well, says Mike Columbus, OMAFRA new crop development specialist. Planted in July and allowed to die over the winter, the crop kills nematodes that harbour in tobacco, ginseng and the rye cover crops often used by tobacco farmers.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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All tanked up
Processing plants are struggling to find capacity - and markets - for Ontario's over-quota milkBY DON STONEMAN
Ontario's dairy industry is contemplating how it will deal with a growing phenomenon in recent years - too much milk.May is normally a production peak for the year, but this past month was the highest on record. Milk production was about nine per cent over quota on average. All processing plants were running at capacity. The plants that make butter and powder, the traditional products that make it to export markets, were straining to deal with the excess. "If more milk comes on the market I don't know what the heck we will do with it," says Ontario Dairy Council president Tom Kane.
The ODC represents most of the province's dairy processors, and Kane blames two factors for the milk surplus. He says that since the system went to interprovincial pooling, there are no longer production limits on dairy farmers. A second factor was the loss of a major contract to Libya for evaporated milk products by a Quebec plant. Because Quebec and Ontario share the same pool, it affects Ontario across the board. That milk must be steered into other products.
The plant supply quota (PSQ) system is a major concern for processors, he says. It has been used for decades to divide up the supply of milk for processors. A plant that gets five per cent of the province's industrial milk to make a product also gets five per cent of the over-quota production. No one wants to give any of that up in case they can't get their market share back when production returns to normal, Kane says.
Kane says processors have been complaining for several years about the lack of controls on production. He says processors and Dairy Farmers of Ontario, the provincial milk marketing board, must meet soon to decide on a course. Changes could come in late summer or early fall.
Bill Mitchell, spokesman for DFO, says there is no difference in how farmers see the returns on their milk cheque than there was two years ago.
In the past, dairy farmers selling over-quota milk were hit with a levy on their last monthly cheque at the end of the dairy year, July 31. That levy took away most of the returns that were made on the over-quota shipments.
In June and July, farmers often strove to either curtail or increase production so that they could hit their quota targets as precisely as possible.
Farmers still get only the world price for the over-quota milk that they produce, Mitchell says. Adjustments are made monthly. And he denies repeated charges in the last month that returns for within-quota and over-quota milk are "blended" in the milk cheque stub so that farmers don't realize what they are getting for their excessive production.
The difference between returns for milk produced within quota and outside of quota requirements is clearly differentiated, he says, and farmers are paid monthly only the world price for their over-quota sales. At the same time as this war of words is going on, world prices for dairy products couldn't be lower.
At the Canadian Dairy Commission some radical changes are being made in how world prices are calculated and transfers of funds are made to the provinces.
Nelson Coyle, a CDC policy analyst, says the three-month average price has now been abandoned in favour of a more immediate price report calculated monthly. "We were having trouble because of the steep decline in international markets," says Coyle. "The formula wasn't giving us an accurate picture of the return."
With world prices calculated every three months, returns for over-quota milk fell faster than CDC could make adjustments. Every month CDC was returning to the provincial boards more money than the over-quota milk produced and sold was actually worth. At the end of the dairy year, the provinces were going to have to make a substantial payment back to CDC. The new policy ensures that a better amount of money is transferred to the province reflecting over quota sales, he says.
It's getting harder and harder to sell dairy products on world markets, Coyle says. "There aren't any markets," he says. "Not only are they soft, we just can't find them.
"There is stiff competition for the markets that are there." Nor is there a turnaround in prices in sight, he says.
Returns to sales on world markets have fallen dramatically in recent months, Coyle says. Before Christmas, producers were benefiting from over-quota milk that was made into higher-value cheese forward sold on contracts when prices were higher in the fall. In the meantime, butter and powder prices had fallen. When the cheese contracts ended, more of the over-quota milk sold was made into lower-returning butter and powder. So the value of milk sold outside quota fell even more steeply than it would have otherwise.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Cows follow steers on pasture
Stocker cattle get first crack at the freshly regrown swards on this Huron county operationBy DON STONEMAN
The steers get the best and the cows and calves get the rest on Tim and Donna Prior's grazing farm near Brussels.The Priors run 64 stockers, then a dozen cows with calves at foot, through 60 acres of pasture in a system that is continually evolving as it expands. Stocker cattle get first crack at the freshly regrown swards, followed by cows and their calves. The leftovers from the stockers are more than adequate to meet the needs of the cows and calves. More important, Prior says, the cows "even out" the growth, so that it is grown back at the same height when the steers are rotated through the paddocks again.
This year, Prior added 15 acres of pasture to his system. He now runs the cattle through 30 paddocks of roughly two acres each. And while he still runs a dozen stockers on 6.5 acres at the front of the farm behind tumble wheels, he has generally abandoned that technology.
There was nothing wrong with it, Prior says. But running tumble wheels no longer fitted in the configuration of the farm with the freshly seeded pasture coming on line this year. Prior thinks his new system is more convenient and less labour-intensive.
The paddocks, roughly 600 x 150 feet, are divided by high tensile wires. Every morning, Prior opens a tape gate to let the cattle from one paddock into another. Cattle graze one paddock after another towards the back of the farm on the east side, then advance towards the front of the farm through paddocks on the west side of the farm in a circle.
The cattle drink from portable waterers. Almost 3,000 feet of 3Ž4-inch plastic hose supplies water to couplers strategically located beside the lane. Prior grazes a 30-foot wide laneway that runs down the middle of the farm, as its own paddock. His first rotation of cattle this year proved that he must divide the laneway itself into a couple of smaller grazing areas. Walking cattle beat two paths up and down its length. He doesn't want to see those paths develop into permanent, non-grassed walkways.
Prior buys 500 to 550-pound steers in the spring to put on pasture. He expects to put 350 pounds of gain on each stocker over 150 days on pasture. Many management decisions are made as weather progresses. The early season drought precluded taking hay off the grazed fields. But rains at the beginning of June brought the grass on sharply, making haying some of the paddocks a must in order to keep the swards in a vegetative state. A grazier doesn't want grasses to grow too much before they are grazed or they go to seed.
The pastures "are a nice salad mix of everything there is," Prior says. Annual rye grass was seeded this spring from a four wheeler. Now well-established in the fields is puna chicory. At first glance, its wide, spiky leaves resemble dandelions. Prior says he seeded it four years ago.
Its long tap root reaches deep for water, and it comes back after grazing faster than other plants that depend on more timely rains. Prior believes that it picks up trace minerals deep in the ground that are essential to the cattle's growth. "And in the drought it is there for the long run, too," he says.
Another 55 ewes and 40 weaned lambs also graze on the farm.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Getting good goat
Eastern Ontario goat farm keeps disease at bayBY DON STONEMAN
Eastern Ontario goat farmer Brenda Leonard's labour to drive diseases from her Nubian goat herd is paying off.Not only are her animals finding a place in provincial meat markets and for export, they're also making a mark in the ring at shows such as the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair.
Brenda and her husband Keith established the herd in 1991 after moving from Quebec to Tweed, Hastings county, north of Belleville. The herd has since undergone a remarkable evolution.
The Leonards started with 15 females, the minimum required to be able to take advantage of the provincial government's now-canceled Red Meat Plan.
Brenda bought her nucleus from a herd that was already free of caseous lymphadenitis (CLA), a bacterial disease that causes internal abscesses - and condemned carcasses at slaughter. That status has since been confirmed by a clinical study conducted two years ago by the Ontario Veterinary College.
Brenda soon undertook a program to eliminate caprine arthritis and encephalitis virus (CAE). The disease - spread from dams to offspring shortly after birth - typically shows up as a brain inflammation in kids, and as arthritis in older goats, often causing the complete loss of milk production and premature death.
Brenda broke the CAE cycle by taking young at birth from their mothers before they'd been suckled or even licked off. At first she fed them with heat-treated colostrum; then she switched to bovine colostrum from a cow herd with export status.
"You have to be there at birth," Leonard says. "You don't allow her to lick them. "It's a tremendous amount of work, but I do it for the good of the goats," she says. The difference in the body condition of the young goats born into the program is easy to see, she says.
Without the debilitation that goes with CAE, her kids are meaty enough to suit butchers, she says; and since her top Nubians show promise in export markets, she hasn't followed through on plans to try to improve her herd's carcass conformation by adding Boer genetics, touted for adding size to goats' conformation.
Though Leonard says her focus was on meat markets, she's finding that show animals "also have their value." It is an unexpected bonus that other breeders are taking her animals to show at the Royal.
Leonard doesn't show her own animals, a key to keeping the herd disease-free, she says. The herd is closed; no bucks are brought in for breeding.
Leonard continues to test the herd twice a year, sending blood samples to an Agriculture Canada lab in Prince Edward Island for testing. Leonard aims for the strong ethnic demand at Easter and Christmas. The Italian market wants a 45- to 55-pound goat for the Western Easter Sunday feast. The Greek market looks for a slightly larger animal, 55 to 65 pounds, for the Orthodox holiday, which is a week or two weeks later. Kids average 10 weeks of age when they are picked up by a Toronto butcher. Nubians are known as out-of-season breeders, but there is no profitable market for goat meat, or Chevon, as it is known, outside of the Easter and Christmas markets. Keith Leonard, who is on the Chevon committee of the Ontario Goat Breeders Association, has scouted markets in Kingston and Ottawa and determined that marketing away from feast seasons is unprofitable. Brenda uses the "buck effect" to bring does into heat quickly.
Bucks are kept away from the females until just before breeding is desired. When they are brought closer to the herd, females come into heat naturally, she says.
She gets one crop of kids annually, preferring to extend the longevity of her does rather than push for three crops in two years.
The CAE positive and negative herds are kept separate. Both herds pasture in the summer, guarded by fiercely protective Akbash guard dogs. The positive animals are kept in a loafing barn half a mile away from the house. The negative herd, mostly younger animals, is close to the house.
Dry does in early gestation get first-cut hay, brome grass, clover and timothy, and 12 per cent protein. The maintenance diet includes one quarter to half a pound of purchased grain per day.
Second-cut hay is fed in the last month of gestation. The protein supplement in the diet is increased to 20 per cent, and gradually grain is increased to one pound per head per day at kidding time. A custom mineral mix, high in selenium, is always fed.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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