14th October 2010

Tauhara-Moana Focus Farm Spring Field Day

Around 70 people attended the field day

Tauhara-Moana Trust and DairyNZ put the Focus Farm on display again for Central Plateau dairy farmers for their second field day. The day had a reproductive focus, as this is one area of the Focus Farm that has been identified using DairyBase, which needed more attention and change. The Focus Farm team sees more efficient reproductive practices driving more milk out of the cows in seasons to come. By having more cows in calf earlier, these hungry mouths can fully utilise the increased home-grown feed that is planned, which will increase milk production profitably.

Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC) has come on board as Gold Sponsors of the Focus Farm having seen an opportunity to support this initiative by providing reproductive expertise and assisting the Focus Farm in implementing systems that support better reproductive performance. David Chin, from LIC, gave the attendees an overview of how LIC will participate in assisting the Focus Farm achieve their reproductive goals. This includes taking the herd from an unrecorded state, to recorded through management and EID tagging; herd testing; using MINDA to record animal health and management events and using this information to make evidence based decisions; and having had the Trust purchase a PROTRACK automated drafting system, assist them in fully utilising this technology to drive more profit from the system.

DairyNZ scientist Lachlan Pearson demonstrating mastitis control

The day was well attended with approximately 70 people attending, but a greater farmer turnout would have topped the day off. The format for the day worked where there were four interactive sessions where farmers were broken up into smaller groups, moving between the guest speakers. Each group was given a group captain from Ravensdown, BNZ, LIC and DairyNZ who chaperoned the attendees around the groups - some having to drag their farmers to the next seminar due to delays with extra questions for their guest speakers! The topics that were covered included Bull Mating from the In-Calf Programme, Heat Detection, Mastitis Management and Using LIC Technologies/Systems to increase profit. One farmer mentioned that he identified a number of times in the day that there were flaws in his systems at home on the farm and changes would be made, having participated in this informative day.

The Tauhara-Moana Focus Farm Team and the Tauhara-Moana Trust would like to thank BNZ and Ravensdown for their silver level sponsorship of the Field Days which provided a fantastic lunch and amenities. Their support for this project is much appreciated.