Grassland Management - Farmers Guardian 07/07/2006, Clive Gurney
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When Clive Gurney reviewed his business last year he realised his grassland management would have to change if he and son, Andrew, wanted to continue dairy farming.
He decided that by both increasing production and decreasing costs a future could be secured and, not wanting to do things by halves, added 50 milking cows to his pedigree Holstein herd overnight – 300 cows are now being milked at Abbey Court Farm, Wigmore, Herefordshire.
That still left the issue of decreasing costs and so, when Mr Gurney was offered the chance to be the guinea pig for a new grassland management group, he leapt at the chance.
He saw grassland management as a very important asset and thought that if the Grassright grassland management group could help him increase the quality of the grass he grew on his farm then it would be an ideal way to save money.
“We’re under a lot of pressure and we’ve got to be more and more efficient,” said Mr Gurney. “Our job is to convert the sun’s energy into food whilst keeping overheads as low as possible and, in my head, I thought we could find a better way to do that with better grassland management.”
Mr Gurney identified a real cost benefit if he could increase his dry matter content per hectare from 14 to 18 tonnes, purely by improving grassland management, and realised he could benefit from some outside advice.
The group looking for a guinea pig was the newly formed Grassright group, which was created by four companies to offer an integrated approach to grassland management for dairy, beef and sheep farmers by providing best practice and technical advice.
Through Grassright, Mr Gurney has access to four industry experts – Neil Matson of Advanta Seeds advises on planting, Vaughn Stansfield of Dow Agrosciences on weed management and herbicides, Mike Denney of Kemira GrowHow on nutrient management and fertilisers and James Woolway of OPICO on machinery.
“The problem for a lot of people is often the lack of a long-term grassland management strategy,” said Mr Stansfield. “Here, we’re working from the basics up and taking away the mystery behind it all.
“A lot of it is knowing what order to do things in, like when to spray docks in a field that’s been reseeded. It’s having a bigger grassland management picture in mind to make things more cost effective.”
The cows are fed on a TMR of home-grown grass silage, maize, wholecrop and crimped wheat and producing an average of 8,900 litres, around 5,000 of which are from forage.
Mr Gurney does not like to produce high volumes of milk from bought-in inputs. He said that in the past he had pushed cows to the 9,500-litre mark but now thought the focus should be on profitability and not yields. “It’s got to be profitable,” he said. “Otherwise it’s not a business anymore.”
In terms of grazed grass Mr Gurney made a drastic change this spring – when the cows were turned out it was to paddock grazing instead set stocking. He felt this would enable his grassland management to be better and reduce muck build-up and contamination.
Around half of the farm is dedicated to grass and from this area Mr Gurney has created 19 paddocks, all of which are round six acres, for the dairy herd to rotate around. Dry cows are used to clean off the paddocks, which are also topped after four grazing cycles to keep them tidy. Grassland management.