A change to the feeding pattern for their milkers has had a far more dramatic effect than was expected, for the owners and operators of a Jersey herd in Northern Victoria.

The stud was originally established by Gordon’s father,  Neil,  in  1954  on  a  100  acre  (40ha) soldier settlement block. Over the years this has been expanded to 350 acres (137 ha) by buying the place next door and the one over the road. Neil was one of the first to import Jerseys into Australia from New Zealand, but they are now using US bloodlines to breed a bigger animal.

“We’re getting 5600 litres a year average – they peaked at around 25 litres a day,” explains Gordon, “and we’re aiming for 6000 litres”.

The  Gilmours  are  currently  upgrading  their milking shed, while the cows are dried off; from a ten per side herringbone to fifteen per side. When we visited in early July the pressure was on to get the works finished before the cows came back in on the first of August.

The shed uses Westfalia clusters with automatic cluster removers, and Gordon said that they needed to expand the stall gates from 600mm to 700mm to handle the size of the cows in the spring, and to a lesser extent the autumn.

Not Happy with How They Looked

Last year Gordon and Robyn were looking to change the feeding routine mainly because, often, the cows were standing around in the lane after milking, waiting to go over the road to the grazing paddocks.

“We feed them two kilograms of pellets in the shed during each milking,” says Gordon, “but some of them would be waiting there for up to two hours, and I reckoned that they may as well be eating.

“When I used to take them across the road as a  mob,  I  was  never  happy  with  how  they looked.”

At  a  field  day  demonstration  at  John  and Margaret  Cockerell’s  Warrain  Jersey  Stud nearby,  Gordon studied their dairy feed pad arrangement.  The Cockerells had put in a Waste-Not feed pad over six years ago and were very enthusiastic about the results that they were getting.

No Bullying at the Feed Pad!

To  the  Gilmours  it  seemed  a  pretty  logical solution to the problem that they had, so their Waste-Not  Fair-Go  feed  pad  was  set  up  in February of this year.

The area alongside the milking yard was built up first with crushed rock and dirt. Although there is not a concrete base at the moment, Gordon says that they plan to do that in time. The feed pad takes a ‘batch’ of 40 cows each side. The cows have controlled access to the pad after both morning and evening milkings. The size of feed pad is relatively smaller than most  people  would  expect  for  these  herd numbers.

Individual  feeding  spaces, between  steel arches, act as a voluntary head bail, so that uneaten  feed  falls  back  into  the  feeder. Importantly, it largely eliminates bossing and bullying. Each animal gets its fair ration, and trampling or soiling of feed is eliminated.

Lift in Production

“There   was   an   improvement   virtually overnight,”  enthuses  Gordon,  “the  next  day after  the  feed  pad  was  put  in,  they  were chewing their cud, and just looking happier!” Just a couple of days after starting the new feeding system,  the Gilmours were seeing a production increase of about two litres per day for each cow; “They’re holding together more, chewing  the  cud  and  the  feed  isn’t  going straight through.”

“It   shows   that   there   was   not   enough opportunity previously for the cows to eat what they wanted to. We were underfeeding and they were getting less fibre in their diet than they should  have.  It  certainly  gives  calves  and younger heifers a better go.”

Gordon puts in 14 rolls which last five days.

“After that there is nothing left at all. Terry Allan from  Waste-Not  Stockfeeders  reckons  we should put in eight rolls and have them cleaned out after three days, but at the moment I’ll stick to our routine, because there’s a bit less labour involved. And the cows are performing well at that.”

“At first we were filling it with round bales of lucerne, and then we went off the lucerne onto ryegrass  and  sub-clover.”  Gordon  told  us. “It allows me to feed any quality to balance the ration.”

After their session at the feed pad, the cows go out onto the pastures – sub-clover by day and other pasture at night. The farm includes 200 acres of pasture, plus 80 of sub-clover, and 14 acres of lucerne.

“After feeding at the pad, they leave keen to get a drink on the lane, and once they go out to the troughs, they can’t return to the feeder”.

Ticking all the boxes

Gordon   is   very   happy   with   both   the contentedness and the improved production of the cows; “For such a small outlay, there are lots of rewards.  We’ve only had it in since February, we’re milking 15 cows less, and we were 9000 litres up for the month of February!”

“We were obviously underfeeding. This system has ticked all the boxes: it is easy to handle, we’ve had a substantial production lift with good results ever since. The cows eat almost every last bit, and are obviously less stressed.” The Waste-Not Fair Go feed pad system, which is suitable for any size dairy operation, allows operators to maintain pasture as the focus on the farm, and ensures that animals are getting a fair ration and a controlled amount of fibre.