increase font size
About 9% of dairy herds nationwide are on full season once-a-day milking.
Once-a-day (OAD) milking could open a whole new labour market for dairy farmers, says a DairyNZ Wairarapa Tararua consulting officer Gray Beagley.
He says OAD farmers can choose what time they milk, so a later milking time may attract workers who find early mornings hard, and people getting young children off to school.
About 9% of dairy herds nationwide are on full season OAD, but Beagley says this is just an average. In Northland about 25% of all herds are OAD. This variation is partly, but not exclusively, due to the weather.
“In many cases it’s about the lower milk yield per cow in the region,” he says.
“We know that switching to OAD will result in 2% to 16% lower production. If a farmer was doing 300kgMS, already the potential loss would be a lot less than if he was doing 400kgMS/cow.
“So the people who are on twice a day (TAD) are probably only going to see a 2% drop in production.”
Beagley says farmers are turning to OAD for various reasons, but he notices that with new regulations and changes in the pipeline for dairy farmers, milking OAD has attractions.
The lower OAD milking workload allows more time for animal and people welfare and there is less stress overall.
Beagley says there won’t be a OAD conference this year for various reasons but there will be one next year. The organisers want to allow more time for new science about OAD to come through. With an annual conference the risk is that old science simply gets regurgitated.
Beagley says he’s now putting the onus on OAD farmers to tell him what information they need and he’s working on a 12 month plan to get information to them. His role is to facilitate getting them the information they need.
Key messages are on pasture quality, and farmers having the grass they need at the peak of the season -- ‘peak high, fly long,’ they say. This is because OAD farmers can have potentially more days in milk and generally have a very compact calving because of improved reproductive performance. They need to take advantage of that by getting the cows to peak high and many people struggle with that.
Beagley says some of this relates to cow quality which they can’t change overnight. But farmers can ensure they have sufficient high quality pasture going into the second round.
On OAD profitability, Beagley says the focus should be on reducing costs -- especially for labour -- to counter the drop in production.
DairyNZ says its plantain programme continues to deliver promising results, with new data confirming that modest levels of plantain in pastures reduce nitrogen leaching, offering farmers a practical, science-backed tool to meet environmental goals.
As an independent review of the National Pest Management Plan for TB finds the goal of complete eradication by 2055 is still valide, feedback is being sought on how to finish the job.
DairyNZ has pulled together tactics that will help farmers improve on-farm efficiency and have positive benefits for the environment. These tactics are based on research, data, and lessons from leading farmers.
The design and construction of an effective dairy effluent system is a complex process.
After serving three as a DairyNZ director, Waikato farmer Chris Lewis is ready for another term.
NZPork has appointed Auckland-based Paul Bucknell as its new chair.
The Government claims to have delivered on its election promise to protect productive farmland from emissions trading scheme (ETS) but red meat farmers aren’t happy.
Foot and Mouth Disease outbreaks could have a detrimental impact on any country's rural sector, as seen in the United Kingdom's 2000 outbreak that saw the compulsory slaughter of over six million animals.
The Ministry for the Environment is joining as a national award sponsor in the Ballance Farm Environment Awards (BFEA from next year).
Kiwis are wasting less of their food than they were two years ago, and this has been enough to push New Zealand’s total household food waste bill lower, the 2025 Rabobank KiwiHarvest Food Waste survey has found.
OPINION: Sir Lockwood Smith has clearly and succinctly defined what academic freedom is all about, the boundaries around it and the responsibility that goes with this privilege.
OPINION: Should cows in NZ be microchipped?
OPINION: Legislation being drafted to bring back the controversial trade of live animal exports by sea is getting stuck in the…
