Complete diet feeding brings big improvement to dairy margins

摘要

Changing to a total mixed ration has paid off in a big way for a Yorkshire farmer who has seen increasing yields of milk at higher protein and lower butterfat despite the level of concentrates fed being more than halved. A North Yorkshire dairy farmerwhose margins have improved to over 1,500 pound per cow since he changed his system to feeding a total mixed ration, has just one regret. "I should have been doing this years ago," says Bill Hodgson of Robinson Haggs Farm, Dunsley, near Whitby, an exposed part of Yorkshire almost level with the North Sea. He started feeding the total mixed ration last October to his high yielding Holstein herd, using a Keenan feeder wagon.