Amabel and Martijn Visscher: Data drives profits for young Tongala dairy farmers

Building Numbers

One of their first strategic decisions was to rear young stock in a feedlot system, where they could carefully control nutrition.

“We didn’t buy any young stock with the place. And we have seen numbers dwindling over the past couple of years,” Amabel said. “We haven’t been able to keep up with replacements.

“As young people just starting in the industry, these high cattle prices have been really challenging. We got in with being able to buy the land just in time, before the skyrocket (in land prices).

“(With the feedlot) we can make sure we get them joined really early and they start producing milk as soon as possible, because we are able to guarantee the growth rates we need in this system,” Amabel said.

Calves are fed in three groups: 3-6 months, 6-13 months, and 13-months-plus, with heifers joined at 13-14 months using artificial insemination.

“We only do sexed semen and beef semen,” Amabel said. “All of our beef animals we either sell them privately to people who are going to grow them out or grow them out ourselves.”

Their first heifers are due to calve in October.

“Longevity is the ultimate goal; an animal that you have for a long time is the most profitable animal,” said Amabel, adding that they also choose semen and cull based on production.

Uniquely, the Visschers do AI twice a day at each milking, and use data from their heat-detection collars to finetune the process.

“We have the collars on the cows to get them in calf as soon as possible and not have the manual task of identifying heats,” Martijn said.

Investment in the collars was made possible through a grant. The system monitors rumination and activity to pinpoint the perfect window for joining individual cows, which is important with sexed semen, which has shorter shelf life, narrower breeding window and is nearly double the cost of non-sexed.

“The smart thing about the collars” Amabel said “is that they learn from themselves. It learns what each cow’s normal is and will tell you when there is a change from that cow’s normal.”

An auto-draft gate in the dairy works in conjunction with the collars.

To read the article in full you will need a subscription to the newspaper, if you already have a subscription or wish to subscribe go to: The Weekly Times

Source: Camille Smith, The Weekly Times, 15 June 2023