Nutrition plays an integral role in the health and productivity of livestock on all farms. Webbline recently welcomed Grant Richards, an animal and human nutritionist, to deep dive into advanced nutrition for improved on-farm health, wellness and productivity. This talk is one of many the team participate in each year to support them in being able to provide the right solutions for all our clients based on their specific needs.
The focus of the day centred around the importance of the quality of feed and how it directly impacts milk production and overall animal health. Grant highlighted the fact that during tough economic times like the sector is currently facing, many farmers employ cost saving measures that often have negative consequences, especially for cow health and production.
The team got to see some real-life data from farms Grant has been working with and took a look at the link between nutrition, fertility, production and animal health. He also opened the discussion on the role of genetics, culling decisions and herd production as they relate to the cost vs profit each cow has. The idea being to create a herd that has the genetic potential to require less maintenance so it can put more into milk production.
Grant gave an example of a client who had bloat issues on farm coupled with a 15% empty rate and per cow production averaging 380kgms. With the simple addition of lime flour and salt, they were able to get rid of the bloat issue, decrease empty rate to 5% and increase per cow production to 500kgms. A really great example of how small changes to nutrition can have big impacts elsewhere in the farm system.
The team relished in the opportunity to learn from Grant’s experience and real-life examples and came away with some new knowledge and a good refresher on old knowledge.
“It only takes a small nutritional change to make a huge impact. I think this is where a mixer wagon really shows it value proposition in being able to create that perfectly balanced mix that is well chopped.” said McKinley Boakes.
“If they can get that feed balance from a nutritional point of view, the savings for farmers is huge. The session was extremely informative and was a great refresher of some of the things that I had rattling around in the back of my head,” said Ed Hart.
Thank you to Grant for taking the time to come and chat with the Webbline team.
