Within winter-milk herds, it is important to ensure that the diet is developed to suit the lower yielding cows in the herd.
Concentrates play a significant role in most winter-milk diets, but excessive or over feeding is wasteful and expensive.
Concentrates should be fed in the correct amounts to the correct cows, with higher yielders getting higher feeding rates.
Winter-milk
The quality of the forage within the diet and yields are going to determine the baseline concentrate feeding rate.
Higher dry matter digestibility (DMD) silage can support a higher level of production.
Meal kg 7 8 9 10 11 12 69% DMD silage 25.8kg 27.3kg 28.6kg 29.6kg 30.4kg 31.1kg 75% DMD silage 31.1kg 32.4kg 33.4kg 34.1kg 34.7kg 35.1kg Difference 5.3kg 5.1kg 4.8kg 4.5kg 4.3kg 4.1kg
A 75% DMD silage and 8kg of concentrates can support production 32.4kg of milk, while the same concentrate feeding level and 69% DMD silage will only support 27.3kg of milk.
Higher DMD silage will result in a higher DM intakes/cow, which also means that cows will have a higher fibre intake.
The higher-quality silage will have a low fibre value, but because DM intakes will be higher, there will be more fibre in the diet.
Knowing the quality of the forage on your farm is vital in order to ensure that the diets are set-up correctly, and over feeding does not occur.
Once the baseline production diet has been set-up, you can then increase concentrate feeding rates to higher yielders in the milking parlour.
Feeder calibration
To ensure that feeding rates are correct in the milking parlour, it is important that you calibrate the feeders in your milking parlour.
There is a simple method to determine if the feeding rates on a feeder are correct – simply place a bucket or bag under the feeder, and allow the concentrates to fall into the bucket, and then weigh the contents. This will determine if the feeder is giving the correct amount or not.
This method should then be repeated on all the feeders in the milking parlour.
It is recommended that feeders are calibrated every month to ensure that the correct amount of concentrates are being fed.
If you change the feeding rates, you should also check the feeders to ensure that the correct amount is being fed.