Feedbase

We recommend dairy farmers managing pastures for growing feed visit the Pastures and rangeland section of the NSW DPIRD website. There you will find the latest information and resources on species and varieties, establishment and management, native pastures, hay and silage, pasture mixes, and rangelands.

More on pastures related to dairy can be found on the Dairy Australia Pastures webpage.

The FutureDairy website also has a number of publications related to feedbase, including how to get more milk from home-grown feed and pasture utilisation.

Kikuyu is found along most of the east coast of Australia and is now the dominant summer pasture on coastal dairy farms. It is capable of high summer growth but milk production can be limited by its relatively low quality if not managed well.

View the detailed Primefact on Milk production from kikuyu grass-based pastures.

We recommend you visit the Smarter Irrigation website for the latest information on irrigation tools, techniques and monitoring. These resources are produced as part of a partnership between the Australian irrigation industries of sugar, cotton, grains, dairy and rice, research organisations, state government and farmers.

Making and feeding high quality silage with lower fibre levels encourages higher feed intakes and better cow performance.

For details follow quality pasture silage– Five easy steps

• Cut pastures early
• Wilt quickly and harvest as soon as possible
• Compact forage as densely as possible
• Seal quickly and well to exclude air
• Repair holes immediately using specific silage tape.

For more detailed information on silage you can purchase the Successful Silage Manual, which details the practicalities and basic principles in producing silage in Australia, from growing and harvesting the parent forage to storing and feeding the silage to ruminants.

Silage online training modules are available on Dairy Australia Enlight including:

• Planning to make high quality silage
• Making silage
• Feeding silage
• Evaluating silage making

It’s important to plan well before you buy.

• Do you know how much feed you need to buy?
• Do you have the feed requirements of all your stock covered?

See the Plan for profit – feed budgeting for more information

Sourcing feed involves a number of factors to ensure you’re buying good quality and good value feed. Below are some factsheets on buying right which include:

• Don’t gamble with feed quality
  Do you really know what you are buying? Is this feed good value for money? These are critical questions. Some quick number crunching can help make you confident that you are buying good quality and good value feed. Don’t roll the dice on feed quality.
• Feed value varies in different feeds
  Nutritional values vary due to growing conditions and how feed is harvested, conserved or manufactured. Hays, silages and co-products are particularly variable. The wider the variation, the more important it is to look beyond the price tag and calculate value per unit of energy and protein, based on an actual feed analysis of the feed. Only then will you know if the feed is good value for money.
• Understand feed tests
  Optimise the health and production of your herd through the nutritional analysis of silage, mixed feed, total mixed rations, hay, pasture, grain, concentrates and forages.
  You can test the quality of feeds in NSW through the DPIRD Feed Quality Service.
• Buying fodder – it’s a domestic market
  Australian dairy farmers are competing in a domestic market for fodder.
  An understanding of how the fodder market operates will enable you to develop a fodder buying strategy that meets your needs.
• Buying feed direct, farm to farm
  At first glance, buying direct from a grain or fodder producer to save costs versus from a feed trader or merchant looks attractive, but needs careful consideration. In making the choice between a ‘direct’ purchase farm-to-farm versus a ‘trade’ purchase, you must consider both the ‘contract management‘ issues as well as the ‘physical movement’ issues when sourcing grain or fodder. Supply chain costs, market volatility and supplier risk must also be considered.
• Alternative fibre sources
  Nutritional values of high fibre by-products are particularly variable. Crunch the numbers before you buy using feed analysis results.

Feed losses can be significant during feeding out, and much more is wasted when it is fed on bare ground. More information to reduce wastage and manage feeding out go to Feed - don’t waste it or Reducing feed wastage costs.

Regularly monitoring the herd (visual and milk production information) is critical to assess if changes are needed to your feed strategy. Assistance from trusted advisors or consultants may also support further decisions needed.

Visual observations of cows chewing their cud (rumination scores) and manure consistency will provide valuable information on overall nutrition. Information on Observing and quantifying cow signs will assist.

Effective quick feeding checks will help assess a stable rumen environment to reducing the risk of acidosis. Additives can also act as a preventative against acidosis.

There are number of benefits of well-grown heifers as they mature and enter the milking herd. Heifers on Target is a great resource to achieving target weights and understanding nutrition requirements at different ages.

Periods of extreme weather (such as storms, floods or fire) may require different feeding strategies in a short period of time. The fundamentals of planning, buying and feeding carefully will remain. More information on feeding during flood and emergencies is available on Dairy Australia.

Nutrition during environmental events, such as floods will be critical to reduce impact to milk production and maintain animal health.

The "Maize Silage - Costing and gross margin calculator" is an interactive Microsoft® Excel spreadsheet that will allow producers to enter their own data to calculate the cost of growing maize silage. With sensitivity analysis tables the tool also enables you to assess yield and price risk.

Topics included in the instructions:

• Main budget
• Sensitivity analysis tables

Coming in 2025

A quick snapshot tool that analyses your financial position from a cashflow perspective, this generates as much physical and financial information about your business as possible with minimal data entry. It looks at financial consequences of feeding decisions/strategies (it is not a ration formulation program) and can be used for basic scenario analysis. Capable of analysing time periods as short as one day up to a full year.

Coming in 2025

Calculate and compare protein, energy and other nutritional costs for different mixes of livestock feeds.

Go to the calculator

An app that helps farmers respond to feed changes during drought. It provides estimated energy, protein and dry matter values for 71 different feeds and can quickly work out minimum feed requirements for animals with a range of nutritional needs.

Read more

Tool to help you understand your monthly feed demand, total feed deficit and required bought-in feeds per month.

Go to the tool