How Good's Dairy

Mastitis microbiologist Natasha Maguire on subclinical cases, cell count, antibiotics and bought-in heifers, and why the answer starts with testing before you treat.

00:00 Coming up 00:28 How good's dairy? 00:47 Meet Natasha and how it all started 03:11 What is mastitis? 04:17 Finding subclinical mastitis: herd tests and RMT 04:58 What somatic cell count actually measures 06:33 Why test every case 07:56 What the bugs tell you about your farm 08:56 Benchmarking your herd's udder health 11:27 When the cell count spikes 12:47 Guessing is expensive: the teat spray trap 14:08 Can teat spray damage teats? 14:58 George's farm: where to start with bought-in cows 16:28 Fresh cow procedures and the first four days 18:05 What's really behind early-season mastitis 19:28 Next steps: just test 21:33 Antibiotics and selective dry cow 24:27 When there's nothing to treat 26:14 Prevention: buying in cows and heifers 28:08 Teat spraying done properly 31:16 Staph aureus: the big one 33:32 Culling, cell count and "it's not the farmer" 34:50 Don't wait, find out 35:52 Takeaways 36:43 Where to find Natasha
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Ash des Landes and his wife are 50/50 sharemilkers on the Canterbury Plains, milking 650 cows at Dunsandel and, from this season, another 585 near Leeston. That's 1,200 cows producing around 600,000 kg of milk solids. In this episode George and Conan dig into the technology behind that operation and what it has actually changed on farm: Culturing mastitis samples in the farm office before treating. Antibiotic use is substantially down, the bulk cell count is holding around 110,000, and Staph cows at dry-off went from as many as 20 to zero. Virtual fencing collars. The fuel bill has halved, lameness is down, the team spends less time on motorbikes, and kale and pasture breaks are shifted several times a day. How Ash weighs up what a piece of tech is worth, and how he gets a young team using it properly. Why the tech is what let the family take on a second farm without giving up time together. Ash's take: we all do effectively the same thing; what separates the good from the best is the timing of the decisions we make. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Canaan Ahu of Agrownomics on soil biology, nitrogen, compaction and carbon, and why the best soil test starts with a spade. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Beef over dairy is the fastest-growing decision on a New Zealand dairy farm — and most of it gets made in about three seconds, standing behind a cow at mating.

George Dodson sits down with Ben Watson, co-founder of GENEZ and a dairy farmer of close to thirty years, to work out what putting beef over your dairy cows actually does to the bottom line. Conan's away this week, so producer Andy Rowe takes the second chair.

They get into why the beef decision drives genetic gain in your replacement heifers, how GENEZ picks a different sire for week one than week six, what calving ease really means next to birth weight, and why a 40kg calf can still come out easy.

Then the money. A bobby calf gets you thirty or forty dollars. Contracted beef calves are running one fifty to one eighty in the South Island — both sexes, the whole of spring. But Ben won't call it free money: every kilo of calf birth weight costs the cow around 0.67 of a milk solid, which is $6.70 a kilo on a $10 payout.

Also in this one: what a "marker" calf is and why it has to be obvious at three in the morning, the $118 difference in rearing cost between the slowest and fastest bull in the catalogue, and the 156kg weaner that turned up the week after Show Week.

GENEZ: @

Dairy's good — how good? Let's find out.

Chapters
00:00 INTRO
00:32 "Ben, how good's dairy?"
00:51 Conan's away — Andy fills in
01:23 Where GENEZ started
03:07 Why put beef over your dairy cows
04:21 Picking the right sire, week by week
06:14 Calving ease, birth weight and gestation
10:16 What the calf rearer actually wants
11:37 The $118 gap between two bulls
12:58 Why the smaller calf can win
15:10 "Who's dropped the ball here?"
16:23 Wearables, beef price and the perfect storm
18:01 What a marker is
20:05 Why you don't use Angus at AB
22:11 The bottom line — $30 bobby vs $180 beef calf
26:08 Contracts, scale and a 156kg weaner
28:10 What that beef calf costs the cow
30:52 Bridging the gap — markers, then SGL
32:34 Coming up — George's beef mating plan
33:20 Where to find GENEZ
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George is a season into milking his own cows, and he's already doing things his own way: a colostrum mob that never goes behind a wire, and a breeding rule with no science behind it at all.

From there it's the ideal cow for a wet, heavy farm, why Conan gets a bit miffed at being called a regenerative consultant, the three legs of the stool on compaction, why effluent ends up in the wrong paddock on most farms, a planting plan going in this autumn, and an honest word about what eleven-hour days do to a body.

George Dodson farms at Leeston, Canterbury. Conan Moynihan is an agribusiness coach and co-founder of Groundshift.
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