Sector News5-3-2018
With limited raw materials available to organic producers, Andy King from Barrington Organic Partnership, Somerset ensures every mouthful fed to his organic herd is formulated to provide an optimum balance of nutrition.
Andy, as well as managing the Coombe Farm Organic Milk Pool for the AH Warren Trust, runs an organic dairy farm with his wife Rosemary on a Farm Business Tenancy. Together with Farm Manager Richard Coombes and Herdsman Barry Chick the team are focused on feeding a diet to their 240 all year round calving herd that meets the organic requirement of achieving a minimum of 60% daily dry matter intake from forage whilst ensuring yield and cow health are the best that they can be. This means paying careful attention at silage-making time, to make very palatable silage with high intake potential.
With 210 cows in milk at any one time, Andy expects to achieve an average of 25 litres/cow/day throughout the year. To achieve this in an organic system requires meticulous planning and here Andy combines his own background in dairy nutrition with all the tools available to him to formulate rations that meet his needs. These tools were put to the test though in winter 2016, when the forage he was feeding didn't perform as well as the previous year. As Andy explains:
"We run all the milking cows as one group and feed a partial mixed ration down the barrier made up of roughly 75% grass silage, 20% whole crop, 5% fodder beet, a small amount of concentrate and sometimes yeast. We look to achieve maintenance plus 20 litres from this and then feed an 18% dairy compound in the parlour for 20-32 litres. We then feed a 16% dairy compound through out of parlour feeders for those cows achieving 32-40 litres. By spreading the feed throughout the day, we lower the potential for acid loading and try to ensure the main partial mixed ration is as balanced as possible.
"We tend to have a maximum crude protein (CP) level of around 16% in the overall diet compared to the industry average of 18%. We also try and grow as much of the protein on farm ie. clover/grass mixes. In winter 2015-16 we actually averaged 15.5% CP and the cows milked well. This winter, though, cows were eating the same amount of silage but milk levels were dropping below 23 litres/cow/day. So, once fodder beet was ready to use in December 2016 and we knew we had a good three months of consistent feed ahead of us, I sat down and looked at how we could improve the diet."