Latest / Talking Dairy / Insights on maximising your homegrown feed | Ep. 110

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Insights on maximising your homegrown feed | Ep. 110 · Talking Dairy

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Kilda and welcome to Talking Dairy.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Mattis Grunendike, the area manager for North Canterbury, and the special host for this episode, we are sharing some key takeaways from recent progressing dairy events on maximising homegrown feed.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you couldn't make it along to one, or you did, and you'd like to hear from another farmer's point of view, this is your chance to catch up on what was discussed.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, we are joined by Will and Sarah Gard, who are contract milkers in the Waimakaderi district.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: They recently hosted an event where the focus of the day was simple.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get the most out of your pasture and why does that matter for your farm system, your profitability, and your emissions goals?
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sarah also brings another perspective as a senior project manager at DairyNZ.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: She shared insights from the Improved Forage Gains Program and the research DairyNZ are doing around pasture performance and resilience.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're also joined by DairyNZ senior scientist Dawn Daly, who talks about pasture allocation frequency and the science behind topping paddocks.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, you'll hear how the guards make pasture management decisions, how they maintain pasture quality, get cows and calf, and how they optimise nitrogen use to grow more grass and stay profitable.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, Sarah and Will, could you please tell us a little bit about yourselves and the farm that you are on?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Mattis.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're Will in Sierra Gard and we contract milk 640 cows for Mike and Ann Prattly, just west of Crosschurch.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we're it's 162 hectares, which makes it about four cows to the hectare.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: So reasonably intensive.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was converted 13 years ago from a sheep and cropping farm.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's fully irrigated.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: We have two full-time staff plus myself and one extra for rearing calves.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're in the second season contract milking currently.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: How did the first season go?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think most of North Kennery had a good season last year.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: We had quite good December summer rainfall, which gave us the opportunity to be 10% above budgeted production.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we, as first year contract milkers, kept our costs under control.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: So couldn't have had a better season, I don't think.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's good, especially when you're building a new relationship with a farm owner.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Bit of a honeymoon phase and then getting into it.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think goods are a bit of an understatement there, Will.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Produced uh just shy of 2,000 kilograms of milk solids per hectare, and you harvested nearly 18 tonnes of pasture compared to a North Canterbury average of 14 and a half, so a very strong result.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Could you talk us through your pasture targets in terms of uh average covers at different times of year, pre- and post-graze covers annual decision making to hit those targets?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: I guess we'll start at dry-off.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: At dry off, because of our stocking rate, we're probably aiming to be no lower than 2,000 cover, perhaps 1950.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, drawing off with 2,000 cover and making sure we shut our paddocks up that we're gonna carve on our sacrifice paddocks on early sort of mid-April, anywhere from the 5th to the 15th of April.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, we've traditionally grown five to six hundred average cover through the winter time in the Waymak district, so that's heading for 2,500 to 2,600 average cover for the farm.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then yeah, basically seven days before cows carve, we bring them home to the farm and we try and feed as little pasture to draw cows and as much to milking cows.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea is to not drop our pasture cover below 2,200 or 2300 for the whole season.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: So one thing I've learnt in the last couple of years is that the most profitable farms don't drop their cover below that.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's not always possible.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's uh weather and other things that can not go your way, but yeah, and that's through having a good spring rotation planner and good planning about feed and what's available to you, and yeah, as we move through the season, making sure we do a 24-hour grazing on our farm.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: We start the fresh break after afternoon milking.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that just allows all of the cows because we have only one herd a chance to eat as much as they can through the night time.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then we're checking them from about 9 a.m.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: to see when they're gonna hit residual.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: So if they're gonna hit residual before afternoon milking, we need to do something about it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Or otherwise, if it's all worked out, the mass is worked out okay, then they stay in the 24-hour break.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, aiming for 1600 residual, and then anywhere from 2800 to 3,200 depends on the time of year.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: It can be 3,200 in the spring and early summer, but then get it down a bit lower as the grass grows reproductive.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then at the end of summer, trying to build a wee bit of cover.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's not always possible, but yeah, build some cover with decreasing stocking rate and putting a bit more fur on and slowing the round down.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So trying to build it up to 2,400, 2,500, and then it will slowly get itself back down to 2,000 through the autumn.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So prior to this, Roll, you're managing 2,000 cows through two cow sheds.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes to pasture management, how different was that with a different scale, and what were the key things that you did to still get those same outcomes across those two different sized farms?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: The principle is the same.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: So trying to manage pasture, but on a larger farm you're trying to get the same outcome through staff rather than yourself.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: So where we are now, you can have a lot more control and make those decisions yourself, whereas on a larger farm you're learning the staff's pasture decisions and then spending more of your time checking up and seeing how the residuals look rather than being more hands-on.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: In your first season on the farm, you also had a significant lift in the reproductive performance of the herd, bringing it up to a 78% in-calf rate and uh 10% not in-calf rate.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: What were the key steps you did to achieve that?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: The simple answer is feeding.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: But as we know, dairy farming is not really that simple.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the devil was in the detail really.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: I guess we took over cows that weren't too skinny like the previous contract milkers had done a good job.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then, yeah, we were following up on individual cows through the winter time, making sure that they were fed well pre-carving and that their body condition score was at five or over, especially for the young cows.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Some things out of our control were our young stock were really well grown.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: So they could carve at five and a half and didn't lose.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Or probably they only lost half a condition score, so we had a good mating result with our first carvers.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think a big part of why we achieved that was our conception rate was a lot higher than it had been in the past, so we were 58% conception rate versus well 50.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'd been down in 48 before in my previous role, so yeah, and we did that through not milking the inseminated cows that afternoon.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: So they were AI'd and then went back to the next 24-hour break.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: So there was however many cows you have up, and they were in the whole paddock and they waited for the herd to come and join them.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that really helped our conception rate.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's all the little minute details that go into it.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Irrigating at the right times, making sure cows aren't hungry.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Dawn's gonna talk about it, but making sure pasture quality is really good through the summer with mowing pre or post.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: We did a bit of both.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: We probably post-mode and pre-mode 40% of the farm last year.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a good season for us.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Gotta have some luck, otherwise you'd have no luck.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: At the event on your place, you talked about being a bit of a risk taker and don't mind putting yourself under some pressure.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: How does that translate into your pasture management decisions?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: It essentially means being three to five days in front of being comfortable, I suppose.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess the biggest one leading up to mating is getting your balance date right.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: If we can see that our balance date is gonna be in five days' time, say every run, say it's the 10th of October.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe this year it might be a fraction later because of the the colder spring that we've had in Canterbury.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Then coming up to that, it's doing our pasture walks, making sure our average pasture cover is not increasing too much, and then yeah, making sure we get what was a 28-30-day round onto a 21-day round at the right time in order to not gain or lose too much pasture cover.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you mentioned uh that you do 24-hour grazings on your farm.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Dawn, could you tell us why would farmers consider offering fresh pasture more frequently than every 12 or 24 hours and what research has been done looking at the effects of this?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_04: By offering pasture more frequently, farmers think that they will stimulate the cows to get up and eat more, and therefore, as a result of that, we'll be able to produce more milk.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_04: There's been a couple of research studies that have been done both in New Zealand and also in Australia that have looked at this.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_04: And I was involved in some research in Australia where we were comparing cows that were getting their pasture as a 24-hour break with those that were getting that same amount of pasture but offered as six fresh breaks during the day, so split into six different feeds.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_04: As part of the research, we were also looking at two different levels of pasture allocation.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_04: So if you offered them more total feed and you offered it six times a day, could you actually get them to eat more and therefore produce more?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_04: What we found from the research was that giving them a 24-hour break versus six smaller breaks, there was no difference in measured pasture intake.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_04: So we were doing a lot of pre- and post-grazing measurements, so to estimate their pasture intake, there was no difference in milk production or grazing time or rumination time.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_04: So essentially we did a lot more work by putting up six lots of fences, and we didn't get no higher intake or milk production from it.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_04: In that research, what we did find was that if we gave them a higher feed allocation, so we offered them more feed during that 24-hour period, that's when we saw that increase in milk production associated with quite a significant increase in intake.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_04: The results of that research demonstrated that it's really the total feed allocation, so the kilograms of dry matter per cow, that is more important in terms of increasing intake and milk production than how often you offer them fresh pasture during that 24-hour period.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_04: And what we think is happening in terms of farmers' belief that by offering it more frequently they do get an increase in production is because they actually offer more feed over that 24-hour period than they would have if they'd just given them a single 24-hour break.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_04: There was also some recent research done by DairyNZ that took this to the next level where they compared cows allocated either pasture four times per day, once a week, so they got seven days worth of feed all at once, or continuous grazing, so set stocking.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_04: What that research found was that they did see changes in behaviour with the less frequent pasture allocation, so that increased the eating time and decreased the lying time.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_04: But the milk solids production didn't differ between those three quite diverse treatments.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_04: One of the things that the research did show was that the pasture growth decreased when they moved to the weekly and the continuous allocation of pasture because the cows were constantly back grazing over the pasture that had already been grazed.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_04: So I guess the two lots of research that are quite different in their approach have both indicated that increasing the frequency of allocation doesn't increase intake and therefore milk production.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sarah, from your work at Darian Z as a senior project manager, what are the key projects in the Improved Forage Gains program that will support farmers in maximizing their homegrown feed?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: I lead our improved forage gains program at DariNZ, which is one of the nine strategic priorities.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, a great team of really dedicated and incredibly intelligent forage scientists in there.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess our program has a strong focus on addressing the spectrum of challenges around pasture performance that farmers are facing.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: So we have five different projects in the program, and they're addressing everything from climate resilience of pastures and things like how we use different pasture species and management practices and feed supply strategies to kind of enable that resilience to climate right through to our forage value index project, which is a bit more of a genetic focus.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: So looking at that genetic gain in plant breeding, right through again to like the pasture tech space.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I guess we cover a bit of everything in the pasture world, and that's desktop work, modelling and analyses, sort of at a computer desktop level, through to there's mechanistic work measuring the physiology of individual plants, up to plot trials, right through to farm systems scale research happening there.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: So a bit of everything.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the Foragers program is also home to the Resilient Pastures program, which was announced recently at National Field Days.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a large seven-year,$17 million cross-sectoral program, which is based in the Upper North Island, focused on enhancing the resilience and recovery of pastures to climate and weather events.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: So anyone interested in that can check out the DairyNZ webpage for more info on that program.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, that's a bit of a taste of the scale of everything that we cover in the Foragers Program.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: You've also done a bit of work recently looking at different technologies and tools for measuring pastures.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: What can you tell us about that and what did you find out?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: Last year we did a bit of a stop take on what tools and technologies are available to New Zealand farmers for measuring pasture performance.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I guess a bit of a disclaimer that that information is over 12 months old now and things evolve really rapidly in that tech space in general, but also in the pasture tech space.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, we had a look at all of the different commercial and some pre-commercial tools that were available to farmers.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: And we looked at everything from sort of their accuracy, their limitations, ease of use, the way the tools work, all that sort of thing.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, there was definitely a real range in most of those aspects.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: So we're talking, you know, things like AMA, Pasture I.O., halter, farmote, you know, and then we also covered traditional tools like rising plate meters, even things like the CDAX pasture meter.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things that really stood out to us most is that a lot of these new technologies are ground truthing or validating using a rising plate meter.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then when we look at the accuracy of the rising plate meter as a tool, it has its own challenges around accuracy and can really vary, you know, 300 up to even 1500 kgs of dry matter per hectare around its accuracy.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: So it makes it challenging to know how accurate some of those tools really are when, well, ground-truthing with a a tool that has its own measurement error.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I guess that was an interesting finding for us.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like I say, we looked at lots of different criteria, but I guess one of the main sort of findings in the end is that there's no one size fits all tool that's going to work for everybody.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: We're not going to sort of stand here and say that this was the best tool and everybody should use it because it's very determined by what your personal drivers are and what you're looking for in your pasture tool.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like if cost is important or accuracy is important.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: For some people, ease of use or, you know, really low labour requirements is what's driving them.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: So depending on what's most important to you, will determine which tool is best for your farm system.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: What have you found that's best for you on the farm well?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: We use a rising plate meter.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we do it on the same day of the week and by the same person, unless it's raining or the person's way on holiday.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: At least that gives us a consistent result.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm probably more very much a farmer by feel and what the cows tell me rather than yeah, the rising plate meter gives you a longest paddock or a the a range of uh covers, and you know when you're last when the paddock was last grazed, and then you can make some decisions around that.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Dawn, can you please explain the science behind pre-graze mowing and post-graze topping and when these practices might be useful?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_04: Before I get into that, I guess mowing of pastures is probably two primary reasons why we would mow pastures.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_04: One is to conserve any surplus that we might have as either silage or balage, and the second is to reset residuals when the cows haven't achieved what the desired residual might be for the farm.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_04: In terms of setting the residuals, there's two main ways that we can do this.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_04: One is, as you've mentioned, pre-graze mowing, and the other one is post-graze topping.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_04: Both come with their advantages and disadvantages, but I'll get on to discussing that in a little bit.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_04: First, I wanted to talk through some research that was done at the Lincoln University Research Dairy Farm a few years ago now.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_04: So that was comparing the performance of herds that the pastures were pre-graze mown at each grazing with another herd where the cows did pretty much all of the grazing.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_04: And then, if there were any times when residuals weren't met, then there was some post-graze topping that was done.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_04: What that research found was that there was no consistent benefit in terms of milk production from pre-graze mowing.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_04: Also, need to mention that the pre-graze mowing happened at every grazing event.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_04: So no difference in milk production or body condition score or intake, so there were no advantages there.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_04: What the research did show that there was reduced eating time with the cows that had their pasture pre-mowing, and that's because they didn't have to go through the process of actually chewing or biting that grass off, so easier for them to actually consume it.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_04: But it didn't increase their overall intake or rumination time.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_04: So you might have thought that because they could eat it more quickly, it would increase their overall intake, but that was not the case with the research.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_04: What the team did find was that consistent or constant mowing of the pasture resulted in reduced pasture density and fewer tillers.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_04: Tillers are really important for the resilience of the pastures, and so that led to lower regrowth potential.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_04: And as a result, they actually needed to feed more supplementary feed in that system where the pregrawed mowing was happening.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_04: The other thing, which was probably a little bit of a surprise from the research, was actually just the amount of wastage that occurred with the pregraze mowing.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_04: They measured between 120 and 200 kilograms of dry matter per hectare wastage.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_04: So that was grass that was mowing, but the cows didn't end up eating it.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_04: So that's potentially one of the reasons why there was no increase in milk production as well.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_04: And overall, because there was a lot more tractor usage and more time required, there was a decrease in the profitability of that system where pregraze mowing was used consistently throughout the season.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_04: Going back to the advantages and disadvantages of preged mowing versus post-graze topping, from a preggraze mowing perspective, I mean, as you've heard Will say he's used both, but at the event on last week, one of his advantages for pre-graze mowing was that the tractor stays clean, which is a valid point.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_04: From a disadvantage is that by mowing everything off to the same height, you remove the ability of the cows to select the parts of the pasture that they would prefer to eat.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_04: From previous research that's been done, you actually decrease the overall quality of the pasture that is consumed.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_04: I guess the flip side of that with the post-graze topping is that the cows have that ability to select and so have that opportunity not to eat as far into those urine and dung patches, not having to eat that lower quality feed.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_04: Once the cows have been in the paddock, there is a high risk of getting quite a lot of dung on the tractor, so that will need a clean afterwards.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_04: The other thing about the post-graze topping is that the cows may actually hit the residual that you want them to hit anyway, so you can actually avoid having to bring the tractor out at all.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_04: So pros and cons of both, and it does really depend on the preference of the farmer.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_04: But I guess that the key message in terms of mowing to set residual is that the mower is set to the right height so that actually you do set that residual so you get that high-quality pasture in subsequent grazings.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you are going to post-groze top, how long after the cows have been there can you do that?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_04: That's a great question.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_04: It will depend a little bit about the time of year and the growing conditions, because that will affect how quickly the pasture regrows.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_04: But at the peak of the season, you really need to be getting in there within 24 hours of the cows coming out because we'll be starting to see regrowth, and you don't want to be topping that regrowth off because that just adds a little bit more stress onto the ryegrass plant.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let's uh talk about fertilizer use or urea specifically.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: What are you guys doing to spread your urea applications across the season, Will?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we plan for 10 applications, but our grazing rounds are probably more like 11 to 12, depending on the year.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: In early spring, we're applying 20, starting off with 25 kgs of yen per hectare.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Second one is 22 units of yen, and then third round is 18 units of yen, and that for spring and early summer is maintaining pasture quality, especially going into mating time.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it stops the pastures going reproductive earlier.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then once we get into November, December, January, we split our maintenance fertiliser over three applications, and that has a really low E rate of like eight units of E.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's because through the summer period the plant can't utilise the nitrogen that well, especially in Canterbury with the heat.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then going into autumn, we probably have to skip around because we get really keen and get on a 20-day round when we should only be on a 23, so we probably skip, make sure we don't skip the whole farm all in one round.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: But over three rounds of the farm, we're sort of skipping fertiliser applications and making sure that we don't dig ourselves into a hole.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then we use progyb, not in the spring, in the autumn with a low rate of liquid N.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's usually about February, March.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have two applications in March and April of a higher N rate to build some cover leading into dry-off.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: And also when it's a bit cooler and the plant can utilize the nitrogen better.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Getting as close as we can to 190 units of N in Canterbury, you can utilize it with irrigation and usually a predictable climate.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: So looking ahead, what's one practical change that farmers could try this season to make the most of their homegrown feed?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: If you're not already doing it, it's measuring your pasture.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: You can't manage it if you don't know what's there.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: So measure, know what you've got, and then you can make informed decisions from there.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: From that work we did with around the pasture tools last year, did write a paper from that.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, you can give that a Google around pasture performance tools.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's in the Grasslands Journal.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: So find what the best tool is for you and just measure what you've got.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think it depends on what you're trying to achieve.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: If you're trying to make a change, what is it?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't do any mowing, you could try to do some mowing or 12-hour grazing versus 24-hour grazing or 70-30, you know.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Perhaps you could try if you do lots of pre-mowing, you could raise a dirty tractor and do some post-graze topping.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is that perhaps on the cards for you this season, Will?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we'll probably do more post-graze topping rather than pre-mowing.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_04: Having the information to make the decisions, but also involving your team in that as well, so they know what you're trying to achieve, so that you don't have to be going out and getting the tractor out, having to reset residuals.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_04: Because as Will's already mentioned, that consistency in terms of your average pasture cover through the season, there's been the evidence to show that if you can keep your average pasture cover in a quite a tight band, then that definitely helps in terms of the profitability of the system.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_04: So measuring it and being consistent with your decision making around your pasture quantity and quality would be my my take homes.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I think just remembering that all the little 1% add up.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: So that eye for detail across all of the little things, I think that's probably what really gets us to where we are in terms of our pasture harvest, just paying attention to all the small things because, yeah, like I say, they do add up.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for today's episode of Talking Dairy.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: A big thanks to Will and Sarah Gard and to Dr.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Dawn Daly for sharing their insights and experience.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: What we've heard today is exactly what progressing dairy events are all about.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Farmers and experts coming together to share what's working, why it works, and how we can all keep improving season after season.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to learn more or find an event near you, head to DariNZ.co.nz forward slash events.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: These events are a great way to pick up practical ideas, connect with other farmers, and take home tips you can put into action on your own farm.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can also find the links in the show notes.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to get connected with DariNZ's latest advice, research tools, and resources, whether it's reading, scrolling, listening, or in person, you can visit dairynz.co.nz forward slash get-connected.
• 28:43
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• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for tuning into this episode of Talking Dairy.
• 28:57
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• 29:01
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• 29:10
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• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: Matiwa, Modi Order, catch you next time.