Managing High Grade Dairy Cows in the Tropics

John Moran

• Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780643107403
• eBook ISBN: 9780643107908
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Agribusiness
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Dairy consumption in Asia has more than doubled over the last 25 years, and has led to more than 50% of the world's total dairy imports now entering Asian markets. Consequently, Asian countries are seeking to improve their self-sufficiency in dairy produce by developing their local milk industries.

Asian livestock importers are looking for increasing numbers of high grade dairy stock from established dairy industries in countries such as Australia and New Zealand. Unfortunately, a major problem encountered throughout Asia has been the poor performance of these exotic high grade dairy heifers when exported from their country of origin to a new, more stressful environment. This has been due to a failure to prepare for their introduction. Exotic dairy cows, particularly those from farms with high levels of herd performance, have high management requirements. If subjected to local and traditional small holder dairy farm practices, they are unlikely to produce acceptable yields of milk or may not even get back into calf. Poor management practices can lead to low growth rates, delayed breeding, stock diseases and even deaths among imported stock both before and after first calving.

Managing High Grade Dairy Cows in the Tropics addresses the entire range of management practices found on tropical small holder dairy farms, highlighting those which are likely to adversely impact on heifer and cow performance, hence farm profitability. It is a companion volume to three other manuals written by John Moran: Rearing Young Stock on Tropical Dairy Farms in Asia, Tropical Dairy Farming and Business Management for Tropical Dairy Farmers.

1

Introduction

This chapter presents an outline of the manual, which highlights the basic components of successful small holder dairy farming in tropical climates.

The main points in this chapter

• This is the third book I have written on tropical dairy farming, with the previous two concentrating on feeding management and on-farm business management of small holder farms.
• This book deals specifically with overcoming the many problems of poor adaptation of exotic high grade dairy stock to the stresses of tropical climates and small holder herd management.
• Small holder dairy farmers (with herds up to 20 milking cows plus replacement heifers) are generally competitive and sustainable.
• Dairy development is associated with technical changes to improve milk yield per cow.
• Most countries have development programs involving importing high genetic merit dairy stock, usually Friesians.
• Dairy production technology can be broken down to nine links in a supply chain on any dairy farm, no matter its size or location.

This book is a companion to two previous books I have written on small holder dairy (SHD) farming in the tropics. The first book, Tropical Dairy Farming (Moran 2005), details the production technology of SHD farming, with emphasis on nutrition and feeding management. The second book, Business Management for Tropical Dairy Farmers (Moran 2009a), discusses the farm business management (FBM) skills required to ensure such systems can remain financially sustainable. This third book, Managing High Grade Dairy Cows in the Tropics, deals specifically with a major problem encountered by many tropical dairy farmers: namely the poor performance of exotic, high grade (that is, high genetic merit) dairy cows when exported from their country of origin to a new, more stressful environment.

The first book addresses the management of the farm’s natural and biological resources to produce quality milk – the climatic environment, soils, forages, concentrates and the livestock. The second book concentrates more on the human side of SHD farming, namely the farming family and their support structures, which include village communities, cooperatives, marketing and government agencies and other service providers and, importantly, the consumers. This third book incorporates a checklist to assess current farm management practices with an example framework for grading the suitability of individual farmers to receive high-quality dairy stock.

Over 75% of the world’s poor people (i.e. 2.6 billion people) live in rural areas, with many of these dependent on farming for their livelihood. SHD farming is an enormous global industry, with 12–15% of the world’s population (i.e. 900 million people) living on 150 million SHD farms. In the Indian subcontinent alone, there are 75 million SHD farms in India and 15 million SHD farms in Pakistan. Herd sizes on these farms are only 2.4 cows per farm, with each farm producing only 11 kg/day of milk. However, milk production supports a very large post-farm gate workforce, because every million kilograms of milk creates 200 jobs, compared with only five jobs in developed countries.

During the last three to four decades, governments throughout Asia have established SHD farming as part of their social welfare and rural development schemes, to provide a regular cash flow for poorly resourced and often landless farmers. Now these have become accepted rural industries. The need is for a more business-minded approach to management decisions on each farm. Dairy farmers across the world, even the small holder mixed farmer with only one or two cows, milk cows to make money. As the dairy value chain becomes more liberalised, and farmers become more exposed to the pressures of global markets, their daily farming decisions must become more based on changes to their farm profitability. This and the previous manuals describe the technical principles, practical processes and business decisions required to optimise their farming operations both in terms of profit and long-term sustainability.

1.1 Who are the tropical small holder dairy farmers?

Geographers categorise the humid (or rainy) tropics as areas with at most one or two dry months and no winter, with the coolest month above 18°C mean temperature. Other tropical zones are:

• wet and dry tropics, which have a well-developed dry season, with one or two rainy seasons
• semiarid tropics, with light rainfall and high evaporation
• hot arid tropics, with negligible rainfall and high evaporation.

My first book, Tropical Dairy Farming (Moran 2005) limited its scope to the humid tropics of South-East (SE) Asia. As with my second book, Business Management for Tropical Dairy Farmers, this book extends its scope to all the above zones within tropical Asia, although dairying is more likely to be restricted to just the humid and the wet and dry tropics. In addition, it covers both South and East Asia, not just SE Asia, as in Tropical Dairy Farming. Tropical Africa and Central America are not discussed in any great detail.

There are often arguments as to what constitutes small holder (as against large-scale) dairying. This manual uses the following descriptors of dairy farms:

• Small holder: up to 20 milking cows plus replacement heifers
• Semi-commercial: 20 to 50 milking cows plus replacement heifers
• Commercial: more than 50 milking cows plus replacement heifers.

SHD farmers are generally competitive and are likely to endure for many years to come, particularly where the opportunity costs of family labour and wages remain low. In addition, dairying is a viable enterprise even among the landless and socially marginalised groups.

Policymakers should resist the all too common assumption that development efforts should move from small holders towards supporting larger scale, ‘more efficient’ milk producers to meet growing consumer demand. Instead, that growing demand should be used as a stimulus to help continue and sustain SHD enterprises, particularly when they face increasing barriers to participate in value chain markets.

1.2 Dairy development and farm technology

Dairy development is generally associated with technical changes to improve milk yield per cow. However, it should be noted that:

• The use of exotic cattle is a rapid and potentially sustainable path to higher productivity, even for small-scale resource-poor farmers and in warm, semi-arid or humid climates. However, there have been many repeated failures of such schemes for obvious, but often ignored, reasons.
• National and local breeding strategies need to address the realities of climate and disease risk to increase the likelihood of successful crossbreeding programs.
• Fodder technology should be an integral part of any dairy development program, particularly if it incorporates importation of high genetic merit stock.

After several decades of dairy development in many Asian countries, average milk yields per cow per day still range between 8 and 10 kg, compared with average yields of 20–30 kg in developed countries. In addition, calving intervals of dairy cows on Asian SHD farms is commonly as long as 16–20 months, when it could be reduced to 14–15 months. This clearly shows their low levels of farm productivity. Some technical solutions are available but they must be carefully selected so they will be suitable for small farmers and their socio-economic conditions. This means that scientists and extension worker must be able to understand factors influencing the acceptance of technology by SHD farmers.

Granted, the genetic potential of local cattle to produce milk can become a constraint as the quality and quantity of farm inputs increase, but the introduction of new improved breeds must be accompanied by other investments in feeding, health, hygiene and housing, lest the system fail.

Scientific knowledge alone cannot solve small-scale farm problems. As well as technological innovations to improve farm performance, there is considerable knowledge on dairy herd management that is not being readily adopted by small holder farmers. In all too many cases, the flow of such information does not reach the individual farmer even though it has been shown to be applicable to many farming situations. This then is the rationale behind this manual in that it presents current farm practices that are already being routinely used by many successful small holder farmers throughout the tropical dairy industries.

1.3 Importing high genetic merit stock onto small holder dairy farms

Most countries with SHD industries have development programs involving increasing cow numbers and genetic quality through importing dairy stock, usually Friesians. This is because their rate of natural multiplication of their national dairy herds is too slow to supply the stock to satisfy the increasing demand of milk and other dairy products.

The major oversight by both the importers – whether private investors or government organisations – and the farmers for whom these stock are destined, is not ‘preparing the environment’ for the imported stock. The greatest shortfalls are:

• lack of knowledge of the quality of local feedstuffs, particularly forages
• lack of understanding of the cows’ nutrient requirements for acceptable performance, to reduce stress
• low skill levels of local labour to handle the high level of technology in genetics of imported stock
• poor sanitation practices for manure disposal, fly control and drying of all floor surfaces
• lack of sufficient quarantine to minimise spread of disease while heifers are still susceptible
• lack of knowledge and management skills to address problems during parturition
• difficulty in supplying an optimum diet during early lactation to ensure limited live weight loss, hence short lactation anoestrus
• minimising environmental stress during early lactation so newly calved heifers will cycle normally after 2 months.

Other factors to consider include:

• selecting the most appropriate heifers prior to transport
• providing good calf and heifer rearing management so that calves from imported heifers are well grown and have the opportunity to express their true genetic merit when milking.

1.3.1 Genetic merit of imported stock

The decision on the most appropriate type of stock to import should be seriously considered. Selection of high genetic merit heifers or cows to import will force farmers to improve their feeding management to provide sufficient energy to allow these animals to better express their superior genetic merit. This is very important in early lactation, when such stock are expected to cycle as well as produce high levels of milk.

Cows can produce the same milk yield in early lactation with whole body energy balances ranging from +4 to –25 MJ/day (see Chapter 5). This is the energetic equivalent of 0.8 kg milk to build body reserves or to lose the energy derived from losing 0.8 kg/day of body weight. Clearly cows that are genetically ‘programmed’ to lose excess weight in early lactation are less desirable in small holder systems where feed shortages are all too common.

Perhaps it would be wiser to import stock of lower genetic merit, and then feed them to produce less milk, but at least improve their chances of getting back in calf within 100 days post-partum. The best far...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• About the author
• Other books and technical manuals by the author
• Acknowledgements
• Acknowledgement of The Crawford Fund
• Chemical warning
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Pre-departure planning and management of stock on arrival
• 3 Soil and forage management on the new home farm
• 4 Young stock management
• 5 The principles of dairy nutrition
• 6 Feeding management of the milking herd
• 7 Disease prevention and control
• 8 Reproductive management
• 9 Genetics
• 10 Managing stock surplus to the milking herd
• 11 Stock welfare
• 12 Environmental management
• 13 Housing systems
• 14 Milk harvesting and hygiene
• 15 Adding value to milk
• 16 The business of small holder dairy farming
• 17 Conducting farmer workshops on improved herd management
• 18 Assessing current farm management practices
• 19 Tips and traps in managing high grade dairy stock
• Appendix 1: Temperature Humidity Index
• Appendix 2: Abbreviations and conversion of units of measurements
• Appendix 3: Expectation and evaluation forms for workshop
• Appendix 4: Indonesian dairy small holder pamphlet
• Glossary
• References and further reading
• Index