Middlesex county milk producer Bob Hosford has inspiration from New Zealand's low- cost dairy industry and Ontario's low-return cream industry as he gets his family's dairy operation ready to survive what may be an uncertain dairy industry future.Bob Hosford and his wife Ruth took over a run-down dairy farm eight years ago near Lambeth, southwest of London, and struggled through the decline of the cream industry before converting to milk production in 1994. Dairy income immediately increased by 125 per cent, as he now gets paid for protein as well as butterfat. His goal now is to boost production from 50 cows bred specifically to graze on his clay land and eat little grain.
The old bank barn houses a New Zealand swing-style parlour milking eight cows to a side with a three-inch mid-level milk line. The heifer barn has been turned into a free stall.
The free stall has been great for cow comfort, Hosford says. Since its completion in the fall, production has risen. He calls the parlour "a low-cost, efficient" way to milk cows fast. With the swing parlour, cows on one side are milked while the other side is prepped.
The milking machine, piping, concrete and standings cost less than $15,000. Hosford manufactured the standings himself. "It's not fancy, but it's functional," he says. The milker has an unusual feature: the pulsator is in the claw.
Hosford eschews power-hungry forage equipment: nothing requires more than 60 hp to run. His major equipment is a mower conditioner, a round baler, and a wrapper. A skid steer equipped with a clamp moves plastic-wrapped bales. He says he can get forage off fields "as good as anyone else" who has tens of thousands of dollars tied up in forage equipment and silos.
At $4 a bale, plastic costs $1,600 a year for his 50-cow herd. "$1,600 doesn't buy too much concentrate." His entire 150-acre operation is in grass and he hopes to pasture all of it when the fences are rebuilt.
He buys all his grain, and hay sales offset some of that cost. Cattle pasture from April to December most years. There are about 50 cows, with half of them 50-per-cent Holstein. Of the crosses, half are Jerseys, with the remainder Brown Swiss, and an Ayrshire.
Hosford's breeding plan breaks most of the rules for profitability touted by the industry. He harbours strong doubts about pasturing large-frame Holsteins on grass: "In the clay land in the spring they do too much damage." Smaller animals are his choice.
He is still experimenting with breeding specifically for grazing. "At this stage, a brown Swiss-Jersey-cross cow crossed with a Holstein bull appears to be the ideal animal." With the influence from coloured breeds, cows weigh between 1,150 and 1,200 pounds each, compared to 1,450 pounds for most mature Holsteins. Last year Hosford was happy with the average of 7,000 litres of milk produced per cow, saying that it compares favourably with 9,000 litres from a 1,450-pound cow, and the smaller animals are easier keepers.
All cows are bred naturally, "for convenience" since the operation is still in the development phase.
"It's important to get the cow in calf," he says. Both a Limousin and a Holstein bull are used and he purchases replacements.
Last dairy year's production totalled 350,000 litres of milk from the 50 cows. Butterfat was at 3.95 per cent, and protein averaged 3.52. With quota for 306,000 litres, he fed the excess to calves.
This year, butterfat is 3.76 per cent and protein is 3.56 per cent to the end of March. The difference in butterfat levels means 350,000 litres of milk shipped; the extra income paid for the higher grain costs since prices went through the roof last fall.
The calving interval is an enviable 11.5 months, with most calvings in the spring and the fall. "This is what you get when you breed naturally," he says. He aims to turn cows around fast so that they aren't producing a lot of butterfat at the end of their lactations.
Since last September, Hosford has been working with Tillsonburg veterinarian Paul Edwards on a herd health program, performing condition scores, pregnancy checks and giving animals Rumensin boluses. Because butterfat is under control he gets better use from his expensive quota.
He is feeding his cows better with this program and expects pastured cows to produce less butterfat and protein, about 3.6 and 3.4 per cent respectively.
The changes have been dramatic in the last year. "We have got to be far more efficient. We had good winter forages," he says.
Hosford bases part of his criteria on milk yield compared to body animal weight. "If you can relate milk yield to size and body weight, I think I get the best yield from that (cow) without having to spend a fortune on grain." Wet distillers grains and some commodities are fed all year round at a flat rate to all milking cows through the computer feeder.
High-producing cows giving more than 20 kg of milk daily, get a 16 per cent pelleted feed through a computer feeder. The standard for a high-producing Jersey is a little lower. All cows have transponders and there is a monitor in the barn office.
Hosford milks in the morning, and carefully examines udders every day. Cows with lumps or off-colour milk are marked for stripping by the afternoon milker. Only two cows have been treated for mastitis in two years. "Cleanliness and efficiency in milking is paramount," he says. His son and a hired man milk in the evenings.
The herd's somatic cell count (SCC) has been as low as 74,000 last June and as high as 500,000 last August when every one else's SCCs were off the scale as well. Hosford blames a new sump pump in the parlour for some tingle voltage which likely increased the SCC in the fall as well. It was quickly corrected.
Pasture seeding involves four clovers: Alsike, New Zealand White, red clover and Ladino, as well as reed canary grass, perennial ryegrass, meadow and tall fescue, timothy and orchard grass.
"We take the view that if we have a general mix we never get stuck," he says.
Hosford applies nitrogen twice in April, with no applications after mid-May: "We do suppress our clovers but they come on in the fall and they give me plenty of milk for my fall calves." His goal is to be able to harvest five tons of dry matter per acre with the cows.
Pastures are chain-harrowed at least once during the year. His smallest paddock is seven acres. Hosford says his clay soils aren't conducive to keeping many cattle on a small area of land at once. They can do too much damage.
"With pasturing," he says "there are no hard and fast rules." In the spring, a group of cattle may graze from half an acre; in the summer, the same number of cattle need two acres. He has set up his overall operation in such a way that if the price of milk free-falls he can double cow numbers. "I still think the industry has to be viable. Farmers have to be paid for what they do. They have to be efficient at the same time."
Simple but bracing
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The Quik S'Port parts are reusable. If they are out of round after a use they can be rerounded with a hammer, as easily as straightening a nail. It can also be used to straighten existing fence braces that are failing, even if the fence is not built with T-posts. It works with any traditional anchor post, wood or metal. Retail price for hinges and sleeves to build a corner post is about US$23.
More paddocks help cattle spread manure
By DON STONEMAN
Locating the water tank in the laneway is a great way to make cattle show up for inspection regularly. But it's a lousy way to get the manure spread around the field.Research from the U.S. shows that putting a waterer into each paddock saves the farmer money in the long run, says Stirling-based provincial pasture adviser Scott Banks. Because cattle tend to "answer the call of nature around the saloon" that is where manure tends to accumulate, and it fails to benefit the fields where cattle eat.
Findings in the U.S. show that properly spreading manure through the field is worth at least C$1,400 a year per 100 cows at current prices for P and K. At that rate, savings on purchased fertilizer will cover the cost of providing water to individual paddocks in three to seven years, depending on the cost of setting up the system, Banks says.
The key to securing this saving is to establish a waterer in each paddock so that cattle need travel no more than 600 feet for a drink.
Furthermore, increasing the rotational frequency of grazing through the paddocks improves the uniformity of manure distribution as well. The greatest improvement in manure distribution was gained by increasing the number of paddocks from a three-paddock system to a 12-paddock system, Banks says.
Tim Prior, Brussels, feels that keeping water near pastured cattle makes life a lot simpler for rotational grazers. He runs a three-quarter-inch waterline on top of the ground from his house to a two-strand fence dividing an L-shaped 30-acre field in half. The waterline runs underneath the two-strand fence and is connected to a 30-gallon stock tank with a quick-coupler to T-joints established periodically down the water line. See Fig. One.
Prior says the quick coupler resembles a hydraulic hose on the tractor and can be plugged and unplugged without spillage. A pressure valve in the bottom of the bank shuts off when it is full.
Prior can easily tip and empty the small stock tank himself before dragging it to the next coupler. The small tank works, he says, because cattle are always close to it and the drain on it is intermittent. "They don't all go up at once. They go and drink when they want. It's not a social gathering anymore."
Cattle pasture between two sets of tumble-wheel fences and are moved daily, with the area they are allowed to graze dependent on the amount of available forage.
There's a spring gate at either end of the divider fence, so after cattle are rotated down one side of the field they can be moved into the other side. Early May, Prior had 30 stockers on the field, he figured that light cattle would do less damage to the soft field than heavier cows.
The couplers in his system cost about $24.50 each and the Waterboy stock tank just over $100. The pipe, sourced in the U.S., cost about 28 cents a foot. He says it is available in Canada at a higher price. It can handle water at 100 psi. The plug-in couplers are $7.50 and the Ts cost $2 each.
Prescription for grazing success
By KEN VALIQUETTE Special to Farm & Country
So you're wintering too many cattle. Prices are low and you just can't give them away. If the hay lasts and prices don't improve, you might be facing a summer with too much pressure on your pasture.Darrell Emmick, grasslands specialist from New York State's Soil Conservation Service, gives practical advice on how to stretch cool-season forage pastures. "Pasture is salvation for farmers trying to survive in a bad cattle market," Emmick says.
He is advancing something called Prescribed Grazing Management.
Using this pasture management strategy for anything from poultry to lactating cows, the farmer can prescribe the best way to get consistent, high-quality forage at maximum production rates.
Central to prescribed grazing management and basic to developing a plan that works for you is understanding the practical options you have: the strengths and weaknesses of your pasture plants (growth cycle and seasonal growth pattern) and how to move cattle around your farm to keep damage from grazing on pasture plants to a minimum.
Emmick points out that 50 per cent of pasture yield occurs in the first two months of the pasture season and the remaining 50 per cent over the last four months, depending on available rainfall and the plants' life-cycle. See Fig. One. During the first 15 to 20 days of rapid growth, up to about eight inches in height, the best quality and good yield are available to the grazing animal. Emmick tries to keep pasture plants at this stage of growth throughout the pasture season by varying the rate of stocking and the duration of grazing.
Emmick doesn't take a firm stand on one particular stocking method, but remains flexible, always ready to apply the prescribed grazing management process to the specific needs of a farmer. Constant grazing of your pasture works if your stock numbers are low and your livestock doesn't require high nutritional levels. But if you are milking and want top production from lactating dairy cows on limited acreage, then high management using rotational grazing works best. See Fig. Two. Emmick stresses: Know your pasture plants and know the grazing demands you'll place upon them.
Providing your animals with plants at just the right stage of development throughout the pasture season, as well as getting maximum quality and yield "is like hitting a moving target," says Emmick. Always growing and at varied rates, pasture can be both under or over-grazed: Over-grazed and the more sensitive plant species such as alfalfa disappear; under-grazed and the plant advances from the vegetative stage into the reproductive phase, developing seed stocks, and a canopy of growth that blocks the sun, preventing new leaf growth.
Emmick recommends you move cattle to another paddock or field when cattle graze it down to two or 2.5 inches. Regrowth in the next field or paddock should be no more than eight inches, which translates to a day or two either side of 15 days in spring and perhaps as long as 30 days' recovery in mid-summer, depending on rainfall.
In prescription pasture management, stocking rates for beef cattle are based on consumption of 2.5 to three per cent of body weight per day per cow. This data is then combined with production figures for your pasture; Emmick uses 100 pounds-per-acre production in spring and 40 pounds for mid-summer. Overall stocking rates are based on the carrying capacity of the pasture in mid-summer, with spring and early summer surpluses taken off as hay.
Making pasture plan work
Once you estimate your grazing demands, the carrying capacity of your pasture and have selected rotational or constant grazing, New York State pasture specialist Darrell Emmick has some helpful pointers on implementing your prescription.- Fences: For perimeter, lanes and major subdivisions, use permanent steel wire. For paddock divisions, use movable electric.
- Water: Place stock tanks to service two or more paddocks or fields. Make sure lactating dairy do not walk over 500 feet, other livestock over 1,000 feet.
- Shade: Keep to a minimum. Keep them grazing.
- Paddock Shape: Square is best, slightly rectangular is next best, to reduce trampling and manure fouling.
- Paddock Orientation: Don't run paddocks up and down hill; run them across. Livestock will over-graze the lower areas.
- Gates: Locate gates in the corner of the paddock that is closest to the direction the livestock need to travel.
- Laneways: In heavy traffic areas, use gravel, shale, and crushed limestone to avoid a mud hole.
- Clipping Pastures: Clip if pastures get ahead of grazing, to keep growth at ideal stage and help head off weeds.
- Fertility: Do a soil test when you develop your grazing plan and fertilize before you implement your pasture plan.
- Pasture Seeding: Frost seed legumes and no-till grass seed after soil testing.
Contact Darrell L. Emmick, Grassland Specialist, 100 Grange St., Courtland, New York for a copy of Prescribed Grazing Management. - KV