Bega dairy farmer Will Russell aims to lift profits with homegrown feed
A combination of data, research and technology play a huge role in the success of this NSW Bega Valley dairy business.
Will Russell has some long-term plans for his family’s dairy farm.
Production growth, a lift in cow numbers and a profit boost are priorities but farming in the NSW Bega Valley — he understands the need for cost control and the importance of maximising homegrown feed.
Bought-in feed is expensive because it’s trucked from hundreds of kilometres away, while seasonal conditions mean resowing paddocks is an annual expense.
That’s why in the three years since he returned home to his 160-year-old family farm, he’s concentrated on the farm’s feedbase, while improving his pasture management and irrigation knowledge.
Thanks to his parents, Rob and Pip, Will understood these as the profit drivers for their grazing enterprise – he’s just applying some modern tweaks.
“Mum and Dad had taken the farm from 80 cows in a walk-through dairy to 300 cows milking in a 20-a-side swingover and made huge steps in terms of per cow production and the quality feed grown on farm,” he said.
“They did exactly what I’m trying to do. They used the technology of their day to do it and I’m using the latest data, research and tech to keep on pushing those things further and further.”
Will farms with his family at Jellat Jellat, near Bega, milking 300 mostly registered Illawarras across a 125ha milking platform.
About 89 per cent of this area is irrigated using a combination of a centre pivot, bike shift sprinklers, K-Line pods and two new hard-hose travelling irrigators.
BEST PRACTICE
Returning home after studying and working as an engineer, Will sought industry courses to learn about best practice irrigation and ways to maximise grazing management.
He’s since reduced the number of paddocks on the farm from 30 to 21, to adjust the number of hectares offered more easily in each paddock to match feed availability.
When it came to irrigation, he was introduced to the concept of “readily available water” or RAW and the affect this has on crop and pasture yields.
RAW is a measure of the water available for extraction by plants and varies between soil types, crops, and season – dictating how often irrigation is required.
Will now calculates the ideal RAW for the farm’s varied crops and pasture species using soil moisture probes and applies water accordingly.
This measured and managed approach to pastures and irrigation has paid dividends with yield increases across the board.
Consistency is his next yardstick.
“Depending on the season we’d previously grow maize crops between 40-70 wet tonnes per hectare, now we want to be up at 70 wet tonnes a hectare as a benchmark every year,” Will said.
“We don’t want fluctuation. We know if we do the things in our control right, we can get up to 70 wet tonnes a hectare and then the whole system works.”
Irrigation is a key to the Bega Valley dairy industry as its often more cost effective to grow and ensile feed, even with the yearly expense of resowing annual pastures than buying fodder from “out west”.
For the Russell family, 15ha of maize (corn) grown each year provides the feed security for their pasture gap in late autumn and early winter, while improvements to their pasture-base – lead by irrigation upgrades – is lifting the amount of directly grazed feed.
FEED FOR THOUGHT
In the past few years, the Russells have decreased the proportion of kikuyu in their milking platform from a peak of up to 80 per cent (100ha). At 60ha now, it represents about 54 per cent and is oversown with annual ryegrass for winter feed. Italian ryegrass and a “new experiment” of 25ha of perennial ryegrass makes up the rest.
Thanks to an upgrade to a hard-hose irrigator, assisting irrigation reliability, Will’s having a “a real crack” at keeping perennial ryegrass alive for at least three years to improve overall pasture quality.
During the past two years the Russells have utilised 10 tonnes/ha of kikuyu and annual ryegrass under their centre pivot, and this is something Will also wants to improve by adding oats to the oversow mix.
“Without a doubt growing more tonnes of whatever crop we put in ground, annual ryegrass or corn, it will directly push down the cost of tonnes grown,” he said.
“Most of the costs – seed, irrigation infrastructure, water rights – are fixed so putting fertiliser and water on at more of the right time and quantity will grow more fairly cheap tonnes and it should dilute those high upfront fixed costs, we should see a drop in feed costs per dry matter grown.”
Will herding some of his cows.
Another pasture management tweak has included using low levels of glyphosate to suppress the kikuyu in early March to assist with the establishment of annual pastures.
This practice has been important to grow a winter feed wedge – vital to increasing the proportion of grazed feed in the herd’s diet.
These small changes have delivered improvements for two important business metrics- per cow production and the grazed portion of the cow’s diet.
PRODUCTION RISE
Per-cow production has increased from 460-470kg of milk solids to 510kg of MS, with Will aiming for production to match the herd’s average 550kg liveweight.
The grazed portion of each cow’s diet has increased from two tonnes/cow to 2.4 tonnes/cow.
Aiming for 2.5 tonnes/cow, Will said this would be supplemented with “just over” two tonnes per cow per lactation fed in the bail and homegrown silage.
“That’s where I think we can keep a relatively low cost of production by – as first priority – always focusing on quality grazed feed into the cow,” he said. “Once we’ve met that requirement, then we can look at growing and conserving silage. We don’t want to have any of the farm in corn just sitting there growing a silage crop when cows could be eating off that paddock.”
As Will and his family consider expanding their herd to 400, he’s conscious of matching feed to cow numbers.
“During the next three to five years if we can show that we are consistently putting an extra 100 tonnes DM away in the pit each year we should be able to milk another 25 cows and work up from there,” he said.
“But if we ever hope to sustainably milk more cows in the future, we probably should have more off-blocks to grow fodder and bring it back to the farm, freeing up more grazing area over the spring and summer where corn is grown currently.”
Will said purchasing or leasing more land to grow corn would be a better investment than relying on bought-in feed.
“We already have a system in place to grow it, conserve it and feed it out,” he said. “It’s very little risk, we control it, know what to do with it and how to grow quality feed from corn. It’s also cheaper feed than buying it out west and we are not at the whim of the market. We want to build our ability to grow homegrown feed before we build herd numbers.”