Outside blocks

Could anyone break down the cost of growing a crop of maize? Just the different components..plough, till, sow, seed, fert req and cost.

Up to now it was an easier sum just to buy standing crop or harested in the pit, but nitrates will change that computation.

Contractor selling you zero vat product may make self growing unviable..

Agree can be other issues like that as well. If lease can be gotten over a long enough term, water etc could be teased out with landowner.

Re growing crops I guess one thing that may come in that sides favour would be when clover is in most paddocks, extra feed may be required for the shoulders or spring when the clover isn't going. We were told the equivalent of a bale a cow would want to be there to counter for clovers late start, over and above normal requirements.

Used to buy maize at around the 950 to 1k an acre into the pit but that was 5 yr ago, dunno what it's running at now to grow or buy

Strongly considering purchasing a zero grazer here

needed extra ground with nitrates changes and it’s not near enough to walk cows too but it is near enough to zero graze

stocked high as is and would have to go back a long way in cow numbers if we didn’t take this ground

fed a good bit silage /maize /whole crop this year to keep grass on the grazing block. It works but I would prefer if it was grass which has me leaning towards zero grazing

I could take back my heifers off the contract rearer but I need to build a shed for them plus fence and water this ground aswell as needing a crush and still having to be there every day checking/ moving them at the very least

I would still be feeding extra meal and silage at home with the above option

have talked to quite a few ppl in the last few weeks who are zero grazing to supplement a high SR and utilise ground near by and they’re all happy with it but they did stress it took up time which is the biggest downside

but saying all that I think there’s enough positives in it for me to give it a try for a year and see if I like it /suits us

Go way at feck

you know nothing about me or my farm bar what I post here.

just because you don’t agree with running a higher stocking rate doesn’t mean I don’t

I taught you had your own baler ,surely making wilted quality bales is a better option then drawing watery grass in the shoulders as well as most of the summer this year anyway ,Will you be at zero grazing nearly every day where as the bales will be done over a couple of days evry 7/8 weeks

feeding really good bales made the first week of may plus maize and soya and 3 kg of a good nut in the parlour atm and the cows went up 1.5 litres on last nights collection when they got grazed grass back in the diet the last few days

See what I mean

you thought you knew enough about me to comment with a snarky view just like I thought I knew enough about you and your farm

Have a really good contractor here that was bringing in a load a grass all summer basically, it works grand and once you keep on a 20 day round, cows milk we'll off it, but Jesus it takes up some time out of your day, even having to put it in with loader then having to shove it in the second-time, if going in-house it will put a hour to a hour and a half daily on your routinebetween cutting and shoving it in...

I'd be very weary of a second-hand zero grazer too, contractor has a feed-all one on her 4 th season and she's giving a nice bit of trouble with wear and tear, he was going changing it but a new like for like machine is north of 75k now,

Thanks jay

have looked at a fullly refurbed grasstech one . Nothing near that price but have heard mixed reports on that brand so not sure yet on what we’ll do tbh

coukd be paying someone to zero graze fir the first while before I commit

ah as i can see you more or less have your mind made up on going zero grazing.... would cutting cow numbers be such a bad thing?? think you said ye were milking 170?? how far back would you have to go for nitrates?? how big is your single payment?? could u do without it....?

i say this as a heap of lads around me are zero grazing.... and all they are doing is going around in circles... tho 1 guy did buy a new tractor last yr... he was sick of having to take off zero grazer after bringing in grass to put on slurry tank to draw out slurry so he bought a tractor for slurry tank now he just has to hop from one tractor to the next and no more taking off or putting tank or grazer... so i suppose thats progress...

hes doing the zero grazing off rented ground which he has with 10yrs... super job done with land... i mean super.. top class farm by him now... unfortunately the owner has got a notion and wants to go farming (big surprise to all of us) so hes going to be without a portion of it next yr...

do it for a yr and see how u get on... but long term i dont think its the solution to your issues...

Best bet is prob do the numbers on it first. Be sure to put in a figure for your own time as well as machinery purchase / running costs.

Have a neighbour who used to zerograze a lot, went thru a couple of machines at it and is a machinery man but they have job gone to nearly all bales bar a bit of zerograzing at the shoulders. The zerograzing just took too much time out of the day whereas at least with the silage it was made and could be fed out whenever. Obv a bit of work in drawing it back etc but like that it wasn't every day.

Trial a bit with a contractor, maybe even time the loads etc and see how it goes. If it works out only for the shoulders of the year may as well get contractor at it if they can as spring will be busy anyway and it will reduce housed workload at year end. That 2 hours could be with the family, social side, etc as opposed to other jobs too.

Same money one would cost could be put into the yard as well if need be? That tends to be the case here anyway always something more pressing to be sorted.

Z grazing wet grass has frig all feeding ….good quality silage trumps it

Why not ….straight making very legitimate point …cutting back few cows and simplifying things isn’t defeat ….saw it here when my dad had to step back his workload and the shiny ambitions I had changed for the better when I stopped trying to follow all the poster boys in the journal etc …far more to life than cows

It’s the complication and extea balancing and work z grazing brings puts me off …then throw in soil compaction and heavy rake off of nutrients …..I’ve 16 acres of red clover I’d planned to z graze ….ground too wet and even if I waited for ground to dry out I’d still do damage ….sheep going to clean it now

most dairy lads z graze in spring and back end bringing in wet low dm grass …hard on cows feet and unless balancing that with fibre it’s strip condition off cows ….I’ve found good quality bales at back end leaves cows far more content

He also went robots and pulled the pin on working their altogether as his workload got out of hand altogether then...

Was madness with the type of cow he had breed trying to get so much dm intake from zero-grazing in the 1st place....

Fully agree you would almost need half a labour unit extra to run the zero-grazer and all the fert/slurrying that it entails, utter madness for a one man band

Definitely accept it will take up time but I really feel it will suit our cows. We’ve a nice sized cow that’s bred for %s and can do over 6500 l

with the extra silage the last few years out protein has dropped from a yearly av in 21 of 3.86 to bring 3.76 this year. Even though we’re making really good silage. We took 4 cuts of silage off one block this year

tbf I don’t think roger was profit driven. He had it in his head how it was going to work and that was it. And the end of it roger was given one year to get the place profitable and he couldn’t do it

the tillage operation on the farm was making as much money as the cow side. That tells you all you need to know about how it was there

What way is that place now, what system are they trying to do,you wouldn't hear alot about it, since he left...

Yes. it’s fairly common knowledge. Don’t want to be running someone down but that’s what happened

Cappaquinn estate brought in a few advisers to see what they were going to do.

They’d have been broke if they had to pay for any land etc

yeah you could be right about the lack of energy. But any time they were short grass we were feeding really good bales of proper silage- wouldn’t all have been surplus paddock bales

gone from 800 kgs to 1.3t meal also so I wasn’t pinching them

they have gone up in milk solids- will do somewhere near 580 this year but if I could have herd the protein those kgs would be worth more