New Zealand
February 4, 2011

There’s not been enough rainfall on dairy farmer David Scott’s dairy farm at Kimbolton this summer, nor during the previous three summers, but this time round he has 40 hectares of high sugar grass to help feed cows through the dry spell.

“It’s a good summer grass and it’s lifted our milk production,” said David, who has managed to keep his herd of 450 cows milking twice a day through the prolonged spells without rain.

“You could tell the Aber (high sugar grass) paddocks because that’s the green grass,” said David, who attributes AberMagic’s persistence to its deep roots in their free-draining Kiwitea loam soil.

Cows enjoy eating the dense growing high sugar grass AberMagic, says David Scott of Homeview Jersey Stud (photo taken October 2010).

“When the rain does come those are the paddocks that recover quicker.”

Meanwhile a lack of soil moisture and drying winds have largely cancelled out the benefit of 70mm of rain that fell late January.

David said he may be forced to start feeding out silage and hay a lot sooner than planned.

The average pasture cover for many Manawatu farms was about 1800kg drymatter per hectare prior to the January 20 rainfall - an amount that’s little more than the residual cover left behind after normal grazing.

“Prior to that rain there was not much left that was grazeable,” said David, whose 275-hectare farm is located 25 kms north of Feilding but at an altitude above 400m and therefore prone to sudden changes of season with at least one fall of snow in winter.

Unlike last year, this year’s drought followed a spring that was cold and soggy with only a small surplus of grass cut for hay and silage.

Normally about 500 bales of wrapped baleage plus 4,000 standard bales and 1,200 large round bales of hay are put away for winter on the Scott family’s Homeview Jersey Stud.

It’s used to supplement the winter grazing of the milking herd and keep on the farm some 120 heifers grown as replacements or for stud sales, and about 30 bull calves, yearlings and two-year-old bulls.

After noting the performance of AberMagic ryegrass over the past four years, and through four droughts, David plans to continue sowing the high sugar grass each autumn into potato crop ground and old paddocks that need to be regrassed.

“It’s good, thick pasture and the stock like it. They come into the dairy full in the guts while in other paddocks they tend to leave a lot behind because it’s not as palatable,” said David, who has seen an extra 100 to 200 litres of milk in the vat when the cows graze AberMagic.

The lift in milk production is on top of already high production from the Homeview herd that averages 350 kgs of milksolids (kgms) per cow in a typical season, which is well above the national Jersey average of 280kgms per cow.

David is aiming for 400kgms per cow on their all-grass system where the only imported supplement is a small ration of grain meal fed in bail bins on the 50-bail rotary platform.

“We would need a normal year to reach that target,” said David, whose high production and low cost farming system has been carefully planned with his uncle Ray and brother Iain.

Ray Scott has farmed the property since the age of 15, mostly with David’s father Bill, and says the first paddocks of AberMagic, now almost four years old, are “still looking good and dense”.

“It’s first summer was a tough one; our worst drought since 1948.”

They have discovered that cows grazing high sugar grass require less bloat oil, because of the grass’ easy digestibility, and its strong regrowth allows the AberMagic paddocks to be grazed five days earlier within a typical 25-day grazing rotation of the farm.

Another saving is in establishing a diploid perennial pasture that will last longer rather than having to replant short term tetraploid ryegrass cultivars.

David, who is vice-president and Lower North Island director of the Purebred Jersey Breed Society NZ, said the objectives of the breed society are production based and its the same reasoning being applied at Homeview Jersey to pasture selection and their other improvements.

Website: http://www.germinalseeds.co.nz/

Published: February 4, 2011