Heifer Management in Dry Times

Rearing heifers well is an extremely important aspect of herd management. Selecting the right heifers and ensuring they reach target weights in a specified time period is integral to the future production of your herd. 

However rearing heifers is a costly exercise so thought and planning is important to ensure you get it right. Carrying too many heifers can be expensive and tie up farm resources. This is particularly so in dry times which we are currently seeing through much of NSW. Today my guest Neil Moss joins me to discuss the cost of feeding heifers and strategies to ensure you rear the number you need.

Links to useful resources related to this podcast:

Feed budgeting tool | Dairy Australia

Back of the envelope feed budget | Dairy Australia

Monthly back of the envelope feed budget | Dairy Australia

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The information discussed in this podcast are for informative and educational purposes only and do not constitute advice. 

Transcript

The Business of Dairy 

Episode #31 Transcript – “Dry Times – Fodder Supply Outlook”

Sheena Carter: Welcome to the Business of Dairy podcast. I'm your host, Sheena Carter, development officer with the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries dairy team.

Rearing heifers well is an extremely important aspect of herd management. Selecting the right heifers and ensuring they reach target weights in a specified time period is integral to the future production of your herd. However, rearing heifers is a costly exercise so thought and planning is important to ensure you get it right. Carrying too many heifers can be expensive and tie up farm resources. This is particularly so in drier times, which we are currently seeing through much of New South Wales. Today, my guest Neil Moss, joins me to discuss the cost of feeding heifers and strategies to ensure you rear the number you need. 

Welcome to Episode 31 of The Business of Dairy podcast, Neil, it's great to have you join us again. Ironically, you and I recorded a podcast 12 months ago, which was on “Managing Well in Wet Conditions” so the tide has certainly turned on that one unfortunately. 

Neil Moss: The pendulum has certainly fully swung again, Sheena, which I guess, there’s nothing really unusual in the east coast, I think we move through very limited periods of optimal conditions, through the full spectrum on a fairly regular basis.

Sheena Carter: Yes, and it has turned pretty quickly, we’re now at November, we did have a very wet period up until the end of, well, this time last year, obviously, but it has turned a lot and we see that a lot of New South Wales is experiencing very dry conditions at the moment, unfortunately. But before we kick in to talking about heifers and how we’re going to manage them through those conditions, for the listeners that haven't come across you before, can you just give me a quick introduction, tell me a bit about yourself. 

Neil Moss: Thanks, Sheena, my name’s Neil Moss, I’m a veterinarian and consultant with a consulting company called Scibus. We work with dairy and beef operations up and down the east coast of New South Wales, into Victoria, a bit of work in Queensland, also interstate, providing a range of holistic advisory services to farm enterprises all over the place. 

Sheena Carter: We're talking about heifers today and managing them through these dry times. In my travels around the dairy industry, over my time in the industry, I've seen quite a number of farms carrying a lot of replacement heifers, you know, more than what might be considered necessary for the size of the herd they're milking. Sometimes, obviously, there's reasons for that, they might be growing the herd, they might be focusing on an export heifer market, any number of reasons, but what have you seen in your travels? You know, you've mentioned covering New South Wales and other regions of Australia, what have you seen on farm, and then can we talk about target replacement rates that we might be aiming for? 

Neil Moss: It's a great question, Sheena, and the heifers are obviously the future of every herd, and also a great potential source of extra income for many enterprises. What we've probably seen over time with enterprises, as a whole range of conditions have changed, has been perhaps an increase in the number of heifers being generated on a lot of properties. We've had some improvements in reproduction, we've had swings towards things like sexed semen, we've had people wanting to avoid the dilemma associated with male calves, so all of these things, I guess, have led us to probably having more heifers floating around in the pool. 

We've added to that some variable access over the last 12 months to export markets, which has probably greatly reduced some of that potential offload, and when we get into New South Wales, we've got this shifting line of the bluetongue zone, which is moving farms in and out of being export eligible as well. All of that being the case, what we're often encountering, and it's particularly pertinent in drier times, where we have limited feed base or expensive purchase feeds, we have seen a lot of herds accumulate potentially more heifers then they really need to sustain their own herd. And that can be okay if it's part of a plan and there's a good thought process around what we're going to do with the extra, but in the situation when there's a lot more than they actually need and there's no plan, this can be an extremely big tail wagging the dog with respect to sucking up resources and, in particular, consuming a lot of purchased feed if we're doing a good job on those. And the challenge, I guess, when compared to the milking herd, and at the moment, even with purchased rations, reasonably good milk prices, there are some pretty good margins over feed costs for a lot of farmers that are doing a good job in this space. With heifers, if you're fully feeding them, there's no margin over feed costs there in the short to medium term, so this is a black hole, and it's a big black hole that's really, I think, putting a lot of our businesses that we're seeing under considerable financial pressure. 

Sheena Carter: If we talk about target replacement rates, if we assume we're a steady state herd, we're not trying to grow our milking herd size, what would you suggest as a target to carry? 

Neil Moss: A lot of this is going to depend on, and again, the steady state of the herd, the existing age structures of the herd and the husbandry and the physical conditions that that farm is operating within. What we normally see is replacement rates sit somewhere between 25% and 33% in most herds, so turning over between a quarter and a third of the herd each year. So herds in areas which are more difficult for cows, where you may have a lot more walking, or conditions that might increase things like lameness and mastitis, they may have higher turnover rates. 

Other areas, which are a bit easier on cows, they may be a bit lower, and a lot of it can come back to husbandry and production conditions on the actual farm itself. So it's somewhere between that 25% to 33%. So what does that basically mean? It means that if you're milking 100 cows, 25%, we need to be calving in around 25 heifers every year. If it's closer to 30%, you know, it's around about 30 heifers that we need to calve in each year, so that keeps us ticking over. I guess, when we're looking to target that, you know, we need to calve 30, it probably means that we need to be rearing, or targeting, having probably at least 35 to 38 heifers being born into the system, because obviously there are some losses, sometimes we do lose a few heifers for a whole heap of reasons, there are a couple that may be infertile and we may lose a few at or around that calving time just from normal causes. So, you know, you look at that base replacement rate, I guess, is the starting point, and it can be a useful process for a lot of farms to actually review this themselves and say, well what has my actual replacement been over the last few years? Because ultimately we'll be enterprise specific, and looking at how many heifers you've had to calve in, or how many cows you've culled or lost each year, should set you up with a target, and then probably target having at least another 10% of heifers being born on top of that each year, just to make up for some of those losses in between. 

Sheena Carter: Sure. Now, I think we've touched on heifer rearing being an expensive exercise because, essentially, we've got an animal and it depends when you're calving your heifers into the milking herd, but you can be carrying this animal for, well you know, it's going to vary in New South Wales, but two years, maybe two and a half, three years before she's actually paying any of her costs, so can we just expand a bit on some of those implications of carrying all those extra numbers? 

Neil Moss: For sure, Sheena, and guess it's important to come back to some very good research, which has been validated in a number of countries, as well as Australia, is what's our optimum age for calving? And look, that's sitting really at around that two years of age. There's a bit of data suggesting that if you can bring that forward, which is probably particularly pertinent in year-round calving systems, to 21 to 23 months, you know, assuming you can make a target weight, which might be about 580kg in a Holstein, you know, high to mid four hundreds in Jerseys, if we can hit that weight at that time, then you know, those animals will have the longest productive life, they'll be the most productive over time, and they actually have the least health problems, assuming they've made weight. So I guess, firstly, one of the important things is that if we're calving in two years compared to three years, you know, for the same size of replacement herd, okay, for the three year calving herd, we've actually got to carry another whole generation of heifers on our farm. So that actually increases the stocking rate, or the number of head being carried, by 50% over and above the base level, and importantly, that 50%, because they're bigger on average, you know, they've got a much higher maintenance requirement to feed or to keep them going. 

So there's a lot of good reasons for pushing that heifer growth earlier. And we've seen a number of our client farms where we've worked hard on this, and by putting a little bit more resource into feeding when they're younger and growing them quicker, we've dropped that heifer stocking rate, that's freed up a lot of country for a whole heap of other purposes to be able to do that. So, you know, keeping those heifers growing quickly, where possible, is very, very important, but again, this is one of the challenges that we're talking about today, Sheena, what do we do when we've got lots of them and we don't have grass.

Sheena Carter: Yeah, that's right, and we don't want our heifers to be a set-and-forget out in the back paddock and not monitored, because that's when we will start to blow out really isn't it? 

Neil Moss: Absolutely, and the monitoring is really important, Sheena, and people can do this a number of ways. You know, we'd certainly encourage periodic weighing of heifers, but it's important to just reflect on the fact that weighing heifers doesn't make them grow, it's a bit like preg testing cows doesn't get them pregnant. They're important monitoring tools that let us know if we're going backwards or forwards, but ultimately, you know, it's the regular observation and understanding of what makes a heifer grow that's important, you know, do they have good quality feed in front of them? It's pretty simple, if they don't have green feed in front of them, and a fair bit of it, they're not going to grow, or they're not going to grow well. So, you know, that's monitoring number one. Monitoring number two, is look at the heifers. You know, if we're not getting good muscular development and we can see lots of bones and condition scores being lost, then those heifers will not be growing at our target rates of 750 plus grams, per head per day. You know, if those conditions are in place, we know we have a problem, and proactively it's great to plan for that, so we're big advocates of effectively running our heifer areas almost like dairies, with respect to pastures, so you know, if they're coastal areas where we normally grow kikuyu, or other summer grasses, you know, for the winter, it's a huge advantage in those farms having an agronomic plan to focus around growing a bit of rye grass or a bit of cereal through the wintertime to feed those heifers and keep them moving. 

Sheena Carter: Do you want to talk about some of the the nutritional requirements from that perspective, things like, obviously, energy and protein and what we're targeting for those growth rates, in terms of dry matter intake?

Neil Moss: Absolutely, Sheena. So when we're looking at some numbers in and around that, heifers require somewhere, the younger heifers, around 3% of body weight, and that's in that 100 out of that 300 kilogram range. And then that slowly drops off to 2.2% of body weight of dry matter intake every day. So, you know, at 300kg, they're going to be needing somewhere around 8kg to 9kg of dray matter per head per day, as they get closer to calving at that 550 kilogram rate that, you know, 2% – 2.5%, that'd be 11kg – 12kg of dry matter per head per day. Now for that to be enough for both maintenance and growth, and particularly in later life when they're also growing a foetus, just before birth the actual foetus needs 30 megajoules a day, which is nearly three kilograms dry matter of feed just to feed the growing calf, over and above the cow and its requirement for additional growth. So we really need to think, that's quite a bit of feed, and realistically the specifications for this feed, for them to grow well, is we need it to be, in the younger heifers, around 18% protein or more. As they get older that protein requirement can be a little bit less, so 14% – 16% is okay, but generally, to get enough energy density in that feed, we need to have feeds that are, sort of, 9.5, 10, 10.5 ME across the whole diet to achieve those growth rates. So this doesn't happen on dry standing feed alone, particularly dry standing summer grasses as we go into winter, just do not have the energy or the protein density, or the capacity, for them to eat enough of it, because it's so fibrous, to keep those animals growing. I guess this becomes a big challenge when we have to feed heifers in dry conditions. We saw the same stuff off the back of the floods, where we had to feed heifers in wet conditions when there was no grass. So under those conditions we need to be looking at purchased feeds and this can be quite complicated to put these rations together in such a way that it's cost effective and safe. 

Sheena Carter: Yep, absolutely. So what sort of feeds are we looking at that are going to meet these requirements? If we're in a situation like now, where we've got a lot of farms that, you know, their heifer blocks might not be, or probably aren't, producing a lot of feed at the moment, and we say we're going to need to either start feeding them, or we need to be fully feeding them, to keep on with these targets. What sort of feeds have we got available that might be able to meet these requirements? 

Neil Moss: It's going to be farm and system dependent, and it'll come back to the resources that they have. So we'll have some farms where they're really quite restricted to being only able to feed forages and maybe some grain supplement, where others may have the capacity to mix feeds in a more sophisticated way with mixer wagons. Ultimately, it's around developing a balanced ration with the ingredients that you have in hand. As we're moving into new crop hay, compared to the rubbish that we had, basically, available last year at extremely expensive prices, the price is still reasonably expensive, but the quality is vastly better this year. So, certainly for older heifers, if people only really have access to hay, and hay is the way being fed, some of the better cereals and the legume hays that are coming on the market are actually very acceptable for heifer diets almost on their own. You know, some of those cereal hays are coming into this year at 9.5 – 10 ME, you know, we can do quite a nice job on older heifers with that, if that's all we can do. Quite often it can be more cost effective across the total ration to be able to use some by-product feeds and some other feeds and complement with those. We've had a lot of people make use of things such as the distillers grain pellets as a strong base to the ration, and you know, I tend to prefer the ones that have got the rumen modifiers and some of the trace minerals and macro minerals added to them in those distiller grain pellets. And again, there's quite a few other good proprietary heifer pellets coming out of a number of the other pellet manufacturers. I think we've got to be very careful with just raw by-products being fed, so straight distillers grain pellets, or straight mill run pellets, or straight grains, because quite often that can be really imbalanced with respect to minerals, and they don't have any buffering in them as well. So, we've seen problems in those, particularly with things like calcium deficiency and not having enough lime or calcium in them, and also some issues around trace element problems and some potential risks of acidosis as well. I guess, this year we've made some quite solid heifer rations out of some more novel ingredients which have been very cost effective. Things like almond hulls, particularly for older heifers, have come in quite cost effectively into a lot of the farms, sort of, under $300 a tonne, where most of our hays were plus 500 for rubbish. So in that situation we were able to use 3kg or 4kg of almond hull as a base in some of these rations, and then mix those with some other grains, some concentrates and a small amount of hay to make very cost effective or, you know, not as cost effective as pasture based rations, but much more cost effective rations than hay and hay grain rations alone. So I guess, ultimately, it comes back to facilities and what we have available. And again, being focused on those younger heifers, probably needing a much higher quality ration with a high level of protein, high energy density, and we can tolerate slightly lower energy density and protein density in those heifers as they get older. 

Sheena Carter: Yeah, that's great. So you mentioned almond hulls, I'm imagining it's not something that's commonly been fed on farms throughout New South Wales. So, some of the challenges around almond hulls and actually handling them, can you comment on that? 

Neil Moss: Look, almond hulls will become increasingly common, I think, as we see such high feed prices for the foragers and people get a better handle on using them. They're a low protein product, they've got a reasonable energy profile, they're quite digestible – the fibre in them, and reasonably palatable. So I guess, there's a seasonal availability, which we do need to be mindful of, you know, they're pretty much only available from, sort of, March, April onwards out till, sort of, October. So, through that autumn, winter, early spring period, and that's associated with, obviously, the harvest of the almonds down south. We're going to see a lot of these products become available because it's a major issue for the almond industry, is what they do with this by-product, so I think it's a good thing for us to get more skills around. You do need to be mindful of its potential for damage from water and mycotoxin risk is certainly one of the issues if it is spoiled, so ultimately, if you're using almonds hulls on farm, it's important to have some capacity for dry storage, either in sheds, or the capacity to cover almond hulls while they're being used. 

Sheena Carter: Yeah right, interesting. Yes, one's waste product is another man's, you know, asset, isn't it, really? 

Neil Moss: Absolutely, Sheena, and it comes back to the on farm opportunities. Even the things like the straws can become a player, you know, if we can mix those with other higher energy density foods and then that can be really useful way of reducing ration costs. Straw alone is a major problem, you know, you fill them up with straw, they physically can't eat enough to even maintain weight, but if you're looking at a 7kg dry matter ration, a couple of kilos of straw as the fodder base, we can wrap the rest of the ration around that and do quite a nice job. 

Sheena Carter: Excellent, very good. Now, I know that you've been running around the state doing some workshops with farmers in New South Wales around dry times and management, and the one that I attended, you were talking about the cost of feeding your heifers in the current environment. If we have a scenario where we are fully feeding heifers, can you just give us a rough indication on what this might actually look like? And even if we were to project it out over a three month period, so, we're in November now, so it would be, more or less, to the end of summer, early autumn if we had to fully feed, what sort of costs are we looking at in this situation? 

Neil Moss: Well, Sheena, look, it's quite a daunting question when you really start looking at these numbers. If you're looking at a 300 kilogram heifer that was eating about 2.5% of its body weight on a daily basis in dry matter, we'd be looking at those needing to consume around 7.5kg of dry matter a day. So what that looks like when you actually buy it, is you've actually got to buy about 8kg of feed a day for those animals. Now, if that was $0.50 a day, or $0.50 a kilogram for that feed, you know, $500 a tonne, for example, we'd be looking at $4 a day per head, just to feed those animals. Now if your feeds are obviously cheaper, they're coming in at, say $400 a day, it's obviously less than that, it's $3.20 a day. So, if we start then putting that over a protracted period, say 90 days, that 90 days at $400 a tonne landed, we're looking at $360 per head just to feed that animal, and well, to keep good growth on it, for that three month period. So these are really important if you've got lots of heifers to manage and you're trying to do the best job possible to keep them moving through a period of feed deficiency. 

It really says that there's two things, you need to actually be prepared for this from a budget perspective financially, you also need to be factoring this into your feed budgets. Most people, when they do feed budgets, do it for the herd and they don't necessarily think about the requirements for heifers. But if you've got a couple of hundred heifers going through that quantum of feed a day, factoring that into your feed budgeting becomes a really important consideration. 

Sheena Carter: So, as you say, quite expensive. Multiply that by 100 heifers and it comes out to some big numbers. So if I'm a farmer and I've crunched my numbers and I've just gone, well, I actually don't have the budget for that, what would you suggest as some strategies to deal with that situation? 

Neil Moss: It's a really challenging question, Sheena. I guess the first thing, is focus on the opportunities that you do have during drought when we do get limited rainfall, or even with irrigation. So quite often many of our farms will have some pockets of irrigation that may not be being well utilised. If we can turn some of that, and particularly if it's areas that are less accessible to milking cows and our core herd, we can actually turn some of those areas into very cost effective heifer feed. So, we've had clients very successfully irrigate areas of millet over summer, or forage sorghum, assuming it's managed well and the animal health issues around it and the risks. Just irrigating kikuyu, can be a very, very cost effective way of feeding heifers, you know, every kilogram we shift from purchased feed, back to pasture based feed, we're probably saving between $0.30 and $0.40. You do that hundreds of times and it makes a big, big difference. So similarly, if we do get a bit of rain and we get some reactivation in our kikuyu country, or our summer active pastures, you know, obviously it's important to focus first on the milking platform, but we shouldn't be afraid to be saying, hey, let's push these other areas, where the milkers don't go, a little bit harder with some strategic use of fertiliser and some nitrogen to try and generate some more feed for the heifers that we have. 

Sheena Carter: Yep, good suggestion. 

Neil Moss: I guess, outside of that, working, potentially, with some nutritional advice. So, how can we reduce the costs on this? You know, we've been able to pull $1 to $2 a day out of ration through smart formulation, you know, that can potentially be done. I guess the other options are probably to really have a hard look at the heifers you're rearing and maybe make some hard calls, looking at the poorer performers, the tail of those heifer groups, what we see, and there's always going to be an exception to this, but generally, poor performers as heifers tend to be poor performers for life. So, making a hard decision around culling the tails out of those herd, and for want of a better work, cutting your losses and offloading those early is probably a very, very good call. You know, continue to look for the opportunities if you're in the southern zones, there are limited export opportunities coming up, and the prices aren't what people are used to. So everyone has a perception of what their heifers were worth based on a really high price last year, it's a bit similar to the beef guys, they got used to a very, very high price for beef and the current prices are very, very difficult to stomach and to operate on. The heifer prices have come way back, but when you look at taking a little bit of a stop-loss on those extra heifers, if you have that opportunity, particularly if you don't need them for your own herd, you might be better off to take your money off the table now and stop that ongoing loss, and a little bit of cash will come back into the business to fund other parts of your operation. 

Sheena Carter: Absolutely. If she's going to cost you $3,600 to feed, yeah, cut some losses. If you're not a closed herd, you know, there's options at the other end. 

Neil Moss: It doesn't take long for that $360 to add up and multiply out over lots and lots of critters if you don't need to do it now.

Sheena Carter: The other thing we haven't really discussed, or factored in, I guess you alluded slightly to wastage in feed by increasing from that 7.5kg to 8kg of feed that you're actually buying in per day, per animal, because we will have some wastage in the system. But there's also the cost of time and labour spent hand feeding animals which, yeah there's the cost, and it's also a mental strain and it's an effort as well, trying to fit that in with the rest of the daily activities on the farm. 

Neil Moss: You know, absolute consideration, Sheena. There's a lot of time and a lot of labour that goes into feeding heifers, and dealing with issues around feed wastage are very important, and look, we can do some low cost infrastructure to support with that. You know, just simple trough systems with logs and rubber belting, feeding along fence lines instead of out in the middle of the paddock, if you're feeding on the ground, proper troughs, proper feed rings, if you're using pellet and grain systems, things like the Advantage Feeders and the other self-feeding systems can be all excellent technologies. You know, we've even got some options with feed intake levels, which we can use to add to feeds to reduce the amount that are being consumed on the concentrate side and control that quite well if there is some other forage available. So there's lots of technology and options in the space to control what's actually being consumed. 

Sheena Carter: Yeah, and I really think feed wastage, it certainly adds a lot of cost to your feed. If you've got 30% of the feed being trampled on and walked through by heifers, it's beautiful organic matter, but it doesn't grow heifers. 

Neil Moss: It's very expensive fertiliser and very expensive soil carbon accumulation, Sheena. 

Sheena Carter: Yes, well and truly. Look, Neil, is there anything else that you'd like to touch on around heifer management in these dry times, or just some key points to leave farmers with? 

Neil Moss: I think the real key points are, once you have your business going to where you want it to be, your management of heifer numbers really is around having a plan. So, know what your herd needs to replace itself, or if you are expanding, know what you need to generate more heifers. If you're in a steady state, once you know how many you need, well, then you've got to have a plan for the other proportion of calves that are born each year. And that goes both for the excess heifers side, but also the male side, which is obviously a tricky issue at the moment. If you understand what your strategy is, then we can continue to work towards that. If our strategy is self-replacement and then we sell everything else, well, then it's about having the option of everything else that's easiest, and the least loss generating at the moment, to work within a set of moral guidelines or principles that you want to operate your business in. You know, the bull calf issue is a real one, and we have to have humane options for dealing with that. At the moment, we're encouraging our clients to effectively give them away, because we know that if you're rearing bull calves, particularly if it's coming out of that milk at the moment, just that rearing cost of a calf, to give it 80 days of milk, at five litres each, so 400 litres of milk across that time, and that milk's coming out of the vat at, say, $0.80 to $0.85 a litre, you know, we're talking 350 odd dollars just in milk costs to get them to weaning. So, have some decisions made, have some policy in place, be prepared with the bulls to manage them as humanely as possible, but giving them away for free is often a better option than hanging out for a better price of rearing them. Just know where you're heading with that, and if you have a marketable option, that's a great option for you to look at, but you've got to make sure that that market is secured as you move forward. So, planning, feeding, get them through the system as quick as possible, and again, it's a bit like dryland farming, we've got to have a plan for when we don't have grass. 

Sheena Carter: Yes, well and truly, and I think if listeners are interested in feed budgeting and not quite sure where to start, certainly reach out to a consultant that you might use, nutritionists, there's good resources on Dairy Australia websites around feed budgeting, and it doesn't have to be complicated to understand how much you need and to start costing that out. And, as you said earlier, Neil, people are often just doing a feed budget based on the milking herd, but there's a lot of other animals that are running around in the business that need to be fed, as well, when we're in situations, dry situations, like we currently are. Fantastic, it’s been wonderful chatting with you, Neil, thank you. As always, much appreciated.

Neil Moss: Pleasure, Sheena.

Sheena Carter: We will speak again soon, thank you.

Neil Moss: I look forward to it, see you at the symposium.

Sheena Carter: Thank you for listening to this month's podcast, produced by the New South Wales DPI Dairy Business Advisory Unit. This series is brought to you with funding and support from the Hunter Local Land Services. In the show notes you will find links to feed budgeting resources mentioned in the podcast. We'd love you to share this podcast with your networks, and feel free to send any feedback or suggestions for future episodes to thebusinessofdairy@gmail.com. You can also subscribe to our Facebook and Twitter feed and view or subscribe to our DPI Dairy Newsletter using the links provided.