High Forage Herd Background

The High Forage Project is a Greenmount Campus Milk Technology Project in partnership with Richardson’s Fertilizers. The joint aim is to develop the project as a means of demonstrating the skills necessary to utilise the full potential of grazed grass and quality silage thereby reducing the feed costs of milk production.

Project Aim

Milk production that will bring increased financial reward to the dairy farmer through the cost effective utilization of homegrown grazed grass and grass silage.

Objectives:

To demonstrate the management skills necessary to achieve high levels of milk production from forage.
To assess the costs of production and financial returns from high levels of milk from forage on commercial dairy farms in Northern Ireland.

Targets:

80 cows
8000 litres / cow / year
5000 litres / cow / year from forage
Calving pattern November to March
375 day calving index
25 percent replacement rate
Within top 15 percent of benchmarked herds for net profit/ha