BREEDING  A  "ROUGHAGE"  COW

“It is hard to teach old dogs new tricks…”

Breed for type and feed for production.     I heard this so much from the breeders my Dad’s age I came to believe it.     That is, until I began milking my own cows, and realized that selection issues change as your herd performance evolves.     When we switched from Holsteins to Jerseys I learned some more… when we switched from confinement feeding to rotation grazing I learned even more yet.

Increasing numbers of selection traits adds complexity to interpretation.

Most of us grew up with production data and type/trait data.     We looked at production traits to gain on income and we looked at type traits to gain on herdlife.     The pace accelerated when composite indexes attempted to combine type and production into sire rankings.   As cow yield potential gained, negatives (calving difficulty, stillbirths, lower conception rates, mastitis, hoof diseases) seemed to accelerate just as fast.    Initially, geneticists blamed inbreeding (which proved to be a diversionary issue, once you consider what Genomics is telling us), then finally began to study health and fitness as “traits”—a process that continues to build momentum today.    The big shocker in the health and fitness trait studies was that  neither plus milk nor plus type is consistently able to increase herdlife.       Many still resist accepting what should make common sense, and delay changing genetic selection approaches for sires, detrimental to our future profitability.

MORE  COMMON  MISTAKES  NEW  GRAZIERS  MAKE

We have personally been through the drill of converting a conventional design dairy into a grass based, intensive rotation design dairy-- and some of the mistakes you are prone to make can be costly.    In order to prevent these mistakes in your farm, we offer these suggestions, some of which may be counter to local advice or your personal inclination-- but still necessary to learn.

Graziers do many things that are different from conventional practice, because they find them a better fit to compensate for the seasonal effects of grass management.    We are beginning a section called "Alternate Management Practices" in which you will find suggestions that will often confuse your more conventional neighbors.    Check it out and if you have such ideas of your own send them to us-- if we like them we might include them.

(1)   'GRASS' IS NOT A 'WEED'

This is the title of another article posted on the website.    The only point not made in the article that matters to you is this:  those trained to dairy in a "non grazing" way will not understand what you are doing and thus will not be good sources of advice on how to do it correctly.   Their preferences may often be to talk you out of being a grazier.    It is possible to be making a living inside agriculture and not be cognizant of what is developing in farming and animal husbandry practices that differ in philosophy from yours-- and this will start with the ignorance of the corn + soybeans + alfalfa farmers that there actually is such a thing as "grass genetics", or that "forage" corn is different from (maybe better for your cows) than "grain" corn.

(2)   PRODUCTION YIELDS ARE ADDITIVE

Most new dairymen, whether conventional or pasture-based, do not start out at the level of milk yields that dairymen with years of experience attain.     The cows you buy to start a herd will not be as "good" as the cows you breed, mostly because incoming cows were used to the environment they left, and have to relearn everything to adapt to you and their new environment.

Adaptation is a basic concept of Biology-- that living beings have to adjust their behavior and performance to the characteristic limitations and opportunities a new environment offers.    In conventional dairying, great effort is put into feeding the "same" feed every day, and in the "same" quantity.    Over time, a production oriented dairyman coaxes his cows to eat more feed, and to digest a feed mix that has an increasing energy density.    Thus the attained level of milk production per cow on that dairy grows as their feed growing, harvesting, storage and mixing skills increase.    But it will also reflect that new environment changing the genes of the animals to mimic what all those changes dictate for cows' functional capabilities.

You can buy cows from a conventional dairy that averages 104 pounds per day, turn them loose in unmanaged pasture, and see their production fall to 30 pounds per day.    This is the result of all the ways in which the environment changed for those cows.      So-- when buying cows-- do not assume that herd x's cows are better than herd y's because of a higher herd average (and thus justify a premium price paid)-- their production level is primarily the result of the management skill of that dairyman within his chosen production paradigm.

Of all the personal qualities of good dairymen, daily discipline in the flow of work has the most impact upon cow performance.    Regular milking times, regular removal of uneaten feed, daily rotation of grazing paddocks to provide a consistent volume of fresh feed, all of these support your level of production.    "The devil is in the details" is an apt description of dairying, and a conversion to grazing does not change your need to be a "manager" of what is a complex production process.   

(3)  SUCCESSFUL GRAZIERS ARE STILL BUSY DAIRYMEN

The worst reason to go into grazing is that you are "too lazy" or too disorganized to do a good job in conventional dairy farming, and tend to run out of feed, or harvest feed of lower nutrient density.    It is proven fact that a systematically rotated grass paddock will produce 40% more feed value than a continuously grazed pasture.     If you are not disciplined to do daily rotation you will also tend to run out of feed as a grazier, without the luxury of stored feed to cover for you, and damaging the production of those paddocks in future seasons.

[More concepts follow]