Breeding better dairy herds

A milk-on-merit scheme allowed dairy farmers to put more money into breeding, as this article showed.

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The milk scheme with a price based on quality is proving rewarding to the better type of dairy farmer. As a result, more money is going into breeding, and this will see an improvement in the national herd, says Liz Bredenkamp, a Friesland farmer of Kestell in the Free State.

“I think dairy farmers are very happy with the scheme, and one can expect higher earnings to result in more ambitious breeding programmes,” she says. “As an example of earnings, we have averaged 53c [about R4,63] a litre since March compared with the average for the previous year of 46c [R4,02/â„“].”

ASSESSING THE MILK PRICE

Bredenkamp, who farms with her son, David Swartzberg, at their Trentham Stud, says the price of milk is assessed on butterfat and protein content and, as a result, their artificial insemination (AI) programme is based on bulls high in these components.

“At Trentham, we’d like to see an average protein and butterfat content in our milk of 3,5% and 4% respectively,” she says. “Our herd average for 1986/1987 with 96 cows was 6 643kg with 3,76% butterfat and a calving interval of 358 days. This brought us a gold medal from the Free State division of the Master Dairyman’s Association.”

The herd shaped up well against the rest of South Africa, with indexes of 124 for milk, 131,3 for butterfat and 123,1 for protein.