Abstract

In recent years dairy farm consultants in New Zealand and Australia have regularly been asked to provide advice to farmers on whether the feeding of concentrates to lactating cows on pasture diets is likely to be economic. The outcome of such a decision is complicated because its effects on milk production, liveweight change, pasture growth and decay, and herd reproductive performance are influenced by variables pertaining to the particular farm and herd involved. Some responses to concentrate inputs are immediate; others occur in the long term. Information on each response variable was integrated into a manual decision support framework to provide a practical decision aid for consultants and farmers. A spreadsheet template was then developed to reduce calculation time and allow a wider range of feed and herd situations to be evaluated. The total economic benefits, and hence breakeven price for concentrates were found to be heavily dependent on the long term moblisation of liveweight gained, utilisation of extra pasture grown and changes in the herd

PJ, Neaves, WJ Parker, and CW Holmes

Proceedings of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production, Volume 56, , 280-284, 1996