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ANIMAL HEALTH AND RESEARCH
Australian pasture-based dairy farm, with about 150 hectares of milking platform, 4 tonnes of dry matter per hectare of pasture not utilised could represent missing out on more than $150,000 of operating profit per year! As the saying goes, we can’t manage what we can’t measure. Monitoring is key, and the recent advances in technology and satellite imagery allow farmers and consultants to do it remotely and proactively. Without monitoring, it is just too easy to get caught in the ‘out of sight-out of mind’ situation; and as a top farmer once said to me “… we look after the pellets because we get an invoice with every load, but it’s easy to overlook pasture management, because we don’t get charged for not grazing paddocks properly”. Sergio (Yani) Garcia is Professor of Dairy Science at the University of Sydney and Director of the Dairy Research Foundation. He leads the Dairy UP (unlocking potential) Program, a large collaborative initiative involving government, industry, university and private sectors.
A simple example may help. With optimum management (pre-grazing cover of approximately 2,700 kilograms dry matter per hectare and post- grazing residual of approximately 1,700 kilograms of dry matter per hectare, both measured to ground level), grazing dairy cows should harvest about 1 tonne of dry matter per hectare grazed. However, at one of the monitored farms, the data show that cows harvested, on average, only 660 kilograms of dry matter per hectare each day. The 340-kilogram difference is a ‘hidden loss’. Taken to the whole year, where each hectare of the farm is grazed at least 12 times, this is well over 4 tonnes of dry matter per hectare of high quality pasture potentially lost. And what does that mean for the bottom line? Factors affecting profitability are many, but we know from the analysis of many years of physical and economic data that 1 tonne of utilised pasture dry matter represents easily about $250 of earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) or ‘operating profit’. A quick ‘back of envelope’ calculation can verify this: 1 kilogram of pasture dry matter can produce approximately 1 litre of milk, on average. At current milk price in NSW that is $0.9-$1.0 of income. With an EBIT (as per cent of income) of 20-25 per cent (actual range 5 to over 35 per cent), that represents $200 to $250 of operating margin per tonne of pasture dry matter; very similar to the above figure from data analysis. So for the average
At p 127, an Australian company provides expert insights into the crucial role of trace elements in livestock production.
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