Gippsland - How Now Gippy Cow
November 2010 Edition
Macalister Demonstration Farm Tracker Project
The Macalister Demonstration Farm receives funding from GippsDairy to analyse and report every ten days on the feeding productivity and profitability for twenty dairy farmers in the Macalister Irrigation District.
The farms, range from 200 to 1,000 cows, with high and low input levels, and various calving patterns. They are providing the Tracker with the quantities and prices of purchased feed, pasture growing inputs, and milk production data.
Every ten days each farmer receives a report that gives an insight into his or her feeding profitability, including indicators such as cow feed intake, diet balance, feed efficiency, decline per centage, pasture consumption per hectare, price of pasture, and ultimately, margin over all feed.
The report contains:
- A set of graphs and table of figures showing each farm’s performance, and current trends compared with previous years.
- A set of graphs and table of figures showing how each individual farm compares with the group.
The following graphs are two of Farm 7’s individual graphs, showing current performance this season.
August milk per cow was higher, and is currently slightly above, last season.
Compared to last year, pasture consumption has held up well in August, but is currently not achieving last year’s performance.
When this farm (the line with the circles) is compared in the group graph, it shows that pasture consumption has been behind the group leaders. The upper five per cent of farms in the group is the line with squares, and the lower five per cent of farms is the line with diamonds. However, Farm 7 is closing the gap the fast.
To keep all information confidential, farm numbers are changed continually. Farm 7 is Farm 221 in the following two graphs. They show how Farm 221 performed throughout 2009-10 compared to the group.
For most of the year, except August, farm 221 managed to achieve pasture consumption near the top of the group.
Farm 221 was able to provide a high amount of pasture per cow most of the time.
The following table shows the feeding margins achieved. Farm 7 is ranked 9th out of the 20. The table is ranked with the highest margins on the left side and lowest on the right, for the ten days to September 30 2010. Inputs for each farm can be examined to find the drivers of the margins.
Feeding profitability is complex. However, there appears to be a trend in the table showing that higher pasture consumption (which is a major controller of feed price), and high cow intake per day (which is a major controller of the level of feed throughput and efficiency of feed use), achieves the highest margins.
The Tracker provides frequent and meaningful monitoring of feeding profitability, helping dairy farmers to decide how they might improve their current feed margin.
The above graphs and tables represent only a small part of the report provided to each farmer every ten days. The performance of the group is regularly reported to the whole industry in the MDF newsletter, available via email to anyone.
For more information contact Frank Tyndall ftyndall@ozemail.com.au
