| 95 nzdairy DAIRY SERVICES » Dairy Production Systems Ltd reproduction issues or animal health issues, and even setting up systems to minimise the impact of climatic events. We do a lot of problem solving, but it’s the farmers’ goals we’re working towards, and their system we’re trying to make more efficient.” The son of a Waikato dairy farmer, for a number of years Bryan worked as a dairy cow vet but felt he wasn’t making much progress helping his clients achieve their goals. “I had done a lot of post graduate training around herd health, farm systems and how to analyse data on dairy farms. I was intent on being on top of the cliff when it comes to preventative vet medicine, but to achieve my goal, I soon realised that veterinary medicine itself wasn’t enough, I had to learn a lot of other skills, including farm systems, budgeting, feed budgeting, rumen nutrition — farm consultancy really.” That was the genesis for establishing DPS, with Sue Macky joining the business shortly afterwards, bringing with her an intensive farming background and international veterinary and nutritional experience. “Liz was managing the business and Sue and I were in the field, and the business grew quite quickly. We started doing educational courses in 2004 which were focused on how to manage feed to look after high producing dairy cows, and that has continued to this day. Sue retired a year ago after a significant contribution to the business.” As Bryan observes, farmers want to look after the environment and says if you have a very efficient system and all your resources are used efficiently, so is your waste. “Your waste is less, your nitrogen loss is less, and your methane loss is less per unit of product produced.” The remedy for down cows Hypocalcemia, low blood calcium, is the most prevalent metabolic disease of the transition dairy cow, a ecting greater than 50 percent of all fresh dairy cows. Matt Wright and Partner Jo, and their two young sons Jackson and Axel, farm 285 well-conditioned dairy cows on the Arapuni, South Waikato, dairy unit they lease fromMatt’s family. Milking o a 90-hectare dairy platform, for the last couple of years theWright’s herd has produced 185,000 kgMS annually. While the herd has traditionally been Spring calving, this seasonMatt is moving to a split calving regime, milking all year round. Fast transition times and less downtime throughmetabolic issues will be increasingly important to his operation. “I feel we’ve had a bit of an issue with down cows through metabolic issues in the past. Not large numbers but we’re always striving to do better, and it consumes a lot of time at a very busy time of year. Over the years we’ve tried di erent systems like a DCAD (Dietary cation anion di erence), which helps the cows supply calcium so that when they calve they have a ready source of calcium. High producing cows have this massive requirement for calcium because they’re producing a lot of milk.” Three years ago Matt moved to Phibro Animal Health Corporation’s Animate product. Matt says while it is a DCAD product, it has proven to be a signi cant step up. “Using Animate we’ve gone from having to treat seven percent of the herd for milk fever to under three percent, and I haven’t used my hip lifters to lift a cow with metabolic issues in the time I’ve been using Animate. I’ve also found that cows transition a lot quicker fromwhen they calve to when they peak. You’re probably looking at a week to ten days faster compared to the past.” While Matt has been mixing the product into the cow’s feed through the mixer wagon for his transitioning cows, Phibro have advised him to use a free choice method, allowing cows free access to Animate which is available in a feed trough while they are in the paddock, pictured opposite. “That will make life even easier, so that’s what we’re going to do this coming calving. Using Animate has taken away the time involved dealing with down cows, which is hard to put a value on at a very busy time of the year.” Animate® nutritional specialty product, which is highly palatable, supports our recommendation of urine pH between 5.5 and 6.0 to help enhance pre- and postpartum blood calcium status. Maintaining normal blood calcium status may help reduce the prevalence of clinical and sublclinical hypocalcemia, which may result in greater herd health and productivity. Animate is a highly concentrated anionic product which is fed in the paddock, dairy shed, or feed pad. Keeping productivity high with a low urine pH TALK TO US TODAY South Island - Megan Hardy 027 488 2548 North Island – Spencer Hickford 027 228 9277 nzsupport@pahc.com | www.pahc.com/nz/ Dairy Production Systems started doing educational courses in 2004 which were focused on how to manage feed to look after high producing dairy cows, and that has continued to this day.
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