Dairy
MMN September 2024 – Regenerative Agriculture: What does this mean for Dairy?
Regenerative agriculture or ‘regen-ag’ for short, has grown in popularity in recent years with events such as Groundswell: the regenerative festival, attracting over 8000 attendees. Milk buyers are now encouraging dairy farmers to adopt regenerative principles, with First Milk labelling themselves as the ‘regenerative dairy’ and Arla running a regenerative farming pilot program. The main…
MMN September 2024 – Is Your Feed Space Sufficient?
As we head into autumn, winter feeding of dairy cows is just around the corner and following a poor summer and reports of some delayed silage cuts, maximising feed intake and feed efficiency is going to be key for performance. Part of ensuring good feed efficiency is the feed space that is available for the…
MMN September 2024 – The Benefits of Metabolic Profiling
Metabolic profiling is a useful management tool to assess the nutritional status of the dairy herd. Blood samples are collected at key times during the production cycle and analysed for various parameters to determine whether the ration is adequate in terms of energy, protein and mineral supply. As the transition period is the time of…
MMN September 2024 – Autumn Grazing for Rotational Grazers: Making the Most of What We’ve Got Left
At the tail end of the growth season making the most of your grass and maintaining pasture quality becomes far more challenging. The aim is to keep grass in the cow’s diet as long as possible whilst maintaining target body condition score. Supplementation with silage and concentrates needs to be balanced with grass availability…
MMN September 2024 – Straights Update
UK Cereals Market Update and Global Impacts Harvest is ongoing with very mixed results; early reports are highlighting slightly lower yields than average for winter wheat (-5% to -8%) and quality also very mixed with bushel weight and protein level concerns. Whilst milling wheat markets locally are limited, information on protein content will likely reflect…
MMN September 2024 – Milk Market Update
Milk Market Update Dairy Commodity Markets Fonterra’s latest on-line GDT auction (3rd September) resulted in a slight drop (-0.4%) in the weighted average price across all products, reaching US $3,833/t. This follows a 5.5% rise at the previous auction in mid-August and is the first negative result since the start of July. The biggest rises…
Scotland’s Dairy Sector’s Progress Towards Net Zero 2045
The Scottish Government has released the latest figures for Scottish agriculture’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and nitrogen use for the accounting year 2022-23. The results are broadly positive with the lowest agricultural emissions since the baseline period of 1990, and a 3% drop on the previous year, down to 7.7MtCO2e (million tonnes of carbon dioxide…
Are Methane Inhibitors a Silver Bullet for the Sustainability of Beef and Dairy?
This article is part of the Climate Change & Carbon Research Briefings series. More articles in the series can be found below: Understanding Natural Capital Markets Collecting On-Farm Biodiversity Data with Bioacoustics Faba Beans for Alternative Protein and Reducing Monogastric Carbon Footprint Applicability of Slurry Separation and Acidification on Farms in Scotland Advancing Agricultural Practices,…
Agribusiness News July 2024 – Milk
Milk production data The latest GB monthly milk production data from AHDB is estimated at 1,129m litres for May, 12m litres less than May ‘23 and the lowest volume recorded for May since 2016. According to BCMS dairy cow numbers in the GB milking herd are the same as last year, indicating that the drop…
Ventilation in Calf Housing through Summer
As the weather warms steps need to be taken to prevent disease outbreaks in calves. Calf sheds should be well-ventilated to ensure cool fresh air is flowing through. Air capacity recommendations per calf increases with the weight of the calves as shown in the table below. Table 1: Minimum air capacity based on calf weight. …