High Yielding Herd At Grass
Over 50 local farmers from the Banbridge area recently attended an on-farm workshop at Hamill Bros, Magheralin. The focus of the visit was managing high yielding dairy cows at grass. It stimulated significant discussion and allowed other farmers the opportunity to review what they were doing on their own farm. The Hamill’s herd has been at grass night and day since 16th April and is currently averaging 34 litres/cow/day with an average concentrate input of 6.5 kg/day.
Throughout April, despite changeable weather conditions, 18 litres of milk was taken from grazed grass per day. This will rise to over 20 litres when grazing conditions improve. Individual cows were yielding up to 57 litres/day, leading to an annual herd average in excess of 8800 litres sold per cow per year from a concentrate input of 2.7 t/cow with almost 3000 litres of milk from forage.
Further events are planned on the topic of feed efficiency, for further information, contact your local CAFRE Dairy Development Advisor
