Improved Management Requirements for High Quality Dairy Cows on
Small Holder Farms in Indonesia
DR. John Moran
Department of Primary Industries Victoria, 120 Cooma Rd., Kyabram, Victoria, 3620 Australia.
Paper presented on International Seminar Dairy Science, Faculty of ANimal Science, Andalas Universiti Padang
Abstract
Importers of high quality dairy stock must be more aware of their requirements for an improved level of herd management compared to local adapted cows. The constraints to milk production, reproductive performance and in fact survivability, are much greater for these exotic heifers than they are in their country of origin. Without appropriate feeding management, these “high performance” stock will after calving, utilise more of their body reserves to produce milk which must be replaced later in lactation for future milking and reproductive performance.Only those farmers with appropriate farm management skills should be offered such stock. This paper present a series of check lists to assess the suitability of small holder farmers for inclusion in dairy development schemes incorporating exotic high genetic merit dairy stock.
Introduction
Dairy consumption in Asia has more than doubled over the last 25 years, and this has led to more than 50% of the world’s total dairy imports now entering Asian markets (FAOSTAT 2008). Consequently, Asian countries are all seeking to improve their self sufficiency in dairy produce by developing their local milk industries. Indonesian livestock importers are looking for increasing numbers of high quality (genetic merit) dairy stock from established dairy industries, such as Australia and New Zealand.
However 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. There are increasing instances where such exercises have led to unacceptably high mortalities rates prior to and poor performance once these imported stock have entered the milking herds, particularly those of small farmers. The major oversight of the private investors or government organisations, and the farmers for whom these stock are destined, is not “preparing the environment” for these imported stock (McDowell 1994). Exotic dairy cows, particularly those from farms with high levels of herd performance, have high management requirements. When 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. We take it for granted that Formula 1 racing teams use high performance fuel, not regular petrol, in their cars and high grade cows are the dairy industry’s equivalent of such machines.
Imported dairy heifers then require a high level of herd and farm management to ensure they continue to grow well and remain healthy to become productive milking cows. 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. Furthermore, without appropriate feeding management, these “high performance” stock will after calving, utilise more of their body reserves to produce milk which must be replaced later in lactation for future milking and reproductive performance.
Dairy development and farm technology
Dairy development schemes are generally associated with technical changes to improve milk yield per cow. However it should be noted that:
· The use of exotic cattle can be 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 as already mentioned, 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
Granted, the genetic potential of local cattle to produce milk can become a constraint as the local management improves, but the introduction of new improved breeds must be accompanied by other investments in feeding, health, hygiene and housing lest the system fail.
After several decades of dairy development in many Asian countries, average milk yields per cow per day still range between 8 to 10 kg as compared to average yields of 20 to 30 kg in developed countries. In addition, calving intervals of dairy cows on Asian small holder farms is commonly as long as 16 to 20 months, when it could be reduced to 14 to 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 farmers.
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 which 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.
Most countries with small holder dairy industries have development programs involving increasing cow numbers and genetic quality through importing dairy stock, usually Friesians.
The greatest shortfalls in not preparing the farm environment for these stock are:
· Lack of knowledge of quality of local feedstuffs, particularly forages.
· Lack of understanding of their nutrient requirements for acceptable performance, to reduce stress.
· Low skills of local labour to handle 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 imported heifers are still susceptible.
· Lack of knowledge and management skills to address problems during calving.
· Difficulty of supplying 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 can cycle normally after 2 months.
· Selection of the most appropriate heifers prior to transport.
· Providing good calf and heifer rearing management so calves from imported heifers are well grown and have the opportunity to express their true genetic merit when milking.
Developing check lists to assess current farm management practices
The following are a series of check lists to allow current management practices to be assessed. More details of each check list are provided in my two recent books on tropical dairy farming (Moran 2005) and farm business management of tropical dairy farming (Moran 2009).
1. Feed production
* Size of forage production area (in m2)
* Types of forages grown on the farm (grasses, legumes, cash crop byproducts)
* Quality of forage at harvest
* Fertiliser management (manure, inorganic fertilisers)
* Forage harvest interval (during wet & dry seasons)
* Fodder conservation practices (silage, hay)
* Year round supplies of fodder (dry season sources)
* Number and type of stock on the farm (milking cows, dry cows, heifers, calves)
* Stocking capacity (too high, optimum or too low?)
* Proportion of forages from home grown supplies
* Proportion of forages sourced off farm
* Types of forages sourced off farm
2. Feeding management
* Typical daily allocation of fresh forages (? kg fresh/milking cow/day) in wet and dry seasons
* Forage preparation (wilting, chopping)
* Hand or machine chopping of forages
* Type of concentrates fed (formulated, by products, knowledge of energy & protein supplements)
* Vitamin & mineral additives (type, others fed)
* Allocation of concentrates (? kg fresh/kg milk produced)
* Measures of cow milk production (peak milk yield, current milk yield, days in milk)
* Pattern of milk production (rate of decline from peak milk yield)
* Body condition at calving, mating, drying off
* Knowledge of cow live weights and changes in body condition scores (mating and calving live weights)
3. Herd management
* Milk fed calf management (colostrum feeding, milk feeding program, weaning age, calf mortality)
* Source of milk (whole milk, calf milk replacer)
* Treatment for scours (use of antibiotics v electrolytes)
* Calf pens (type, cleanliness)
* Weaned heifer management (concentrate feeding, mating age, age at first calving)
* Visual assessment of condition of calves and heifers
* Disease management (vaccination program, veterinarian support & animal health program, drug storage, protocol for treating scours, milk fever & other diseases)
* Reproductive management (heat detection, routine pregnancy testing, calving interval, conception rate)
* Breeding program (criteria for selection of sires)
* Lameness (locomotion test)
* Mastitis (incidence, routine California mastitis tests, management & control programs)
* Climatic environment (monitor respiration rates, outdoor access at night)
* Structure of dairy herd (% productive cows in milking herd, % productive cows in entire herd)
* Record keeping (board in shed, note book, computer)
* What records are maintained
* Target setting (daily milk yield, long term herd size)
* Welfare issues (stock transport, any obvious problems)
* Surplus stock (disposal, growing out male stock)
* Other sources of dairy income (manure, excess fodder, biogas)
4. Housing
* Shed design (floor slope & comfort, roof height, ventilation)
* Access to water (adequate, continual)
* Climate control (temperature & humidity inside shed, sprinklers, fans, varying feeding management during year)
* Shed cleanliness (layout for cleaning, frequency of cleaning)
* Cow stalls (tie stalls or loose housing, free stalls, sufficient lounging area)
* Milk feeding calf pens (crates, deep litter, can easily separate calves, cleanliness)
* Grouping of milking cows based on stage of lactation (yard for heat detection)
* Pen layout inside shed (for young stock, hospital pen for isolation)
* Location of milk fed calf pens away from adult cows
* Feed storage facilities (separate to stock area, bird, insect & vermin proof, mixer for concentrates, chopper for forages)
* Services (insulation, electricity, water for washing down, hot water for calf feeding equipment)
* Catering for personnel (suitable space and furniture for relaxing, lockable storage for drugs)
* Effluent disposal (size of manure pit, how frequently emptied)
5. Milking management
* Separate milking area (good layout for machine milking)
* Hand milking (personal hygiene, milking method, type of and cleanliness of milking bucket)
* Machine milking (cleanliness, quality & replacement of rubber liners)
* Milk storage (milk cooler, stored in cool location)
* Milking hygiene (hot water, soap, sanitisers, store buckets & milk cans upside down)
* Milk quality & unit return (Fat%, Solids not fat or protein%, bacterial contamination, milk grade,? Rp/kg milk)
6. General farm management
* Record keeping (board in shed, note book, computer) and sufficient office space
* Extent of record keeping (cow production only, performance of all stock, all farm inputs, labour)
* Systematic record keeping (accessibility, kept in logical format, is it referred to in future)
* Extent of financial records (occasionally revisited, relationship with creditors)
* Knowledge of costs of milk production (? Rp/kg milk produced on farm)
* Short, medium & long term plan for farm
* Making good use of service providers (free information, aware of all services)
* Efficiency of utilising employed & family labour
* Communication and management of paid labour
* Milk marketing (member of dairy cooperative, considered value adding, sought all possible market outlets)
* Subjective assessment of overall farm management skills
Grading farmer skills
Such a structured approach to assess farm management can be used as a framework for grading the suitability of individual farmers to receive imported high quality dairy stock. For example, the following set of criteria was developed for a herd improvement program in Central Java, using a grade of good, average or poor, with some objective and others subjective:
Objective criteria
* Average milk yield per cow: above 12 kg/day, good; 10-12 kg/day, average; below 10 kg/day, poor.
* Price for existing milk produced (as this entails milk quality and composition): above 3,000 Rp/kg, good; 2,500–3,000 Rp/kg, average; below 2,500 Rp/kg, poor.
* Fresh forage supplies (grass, cassava leaf, etc.) in the wet season: above 30 kg/day, good; 20–30 kg/day, average; below 20 kg/day; poor.
* Record keeping: daily production, artificial insemination (when), when veterinarians visit and for what disease, when and what vaccination, from where the stock originate, their predicted calving dates. If the farmer writes the details down and remembers, good; if he remembers but does not write them down, average; if he does not know or remember, poor.
Subjective criteria
* Condition of cow shed: size, ventilation, condition of floor, hygiene (where is the manure pit?)
* Herd management: condition of dairy cow (health, weight, body condition), condition of young stock (health, weight for age, body condition), reproduction (calving interval).
* Milking management: equipment, hygiene, post-harvest milk handling.
The above example was developed specifically for a dairy development program for one region in Java, predominantly based on introducing high genetic merit stock both from within Indonesia and imported from Australia. As current levels of farm management were suboptimal, the standard of the grading scores were not high. This would probably need to be revised when developing a grading score for dairy development schemes in other regions outside Central Java.
This scheme was developed for a dairy adviser workshop in which participants visited several farms to assess their current levels of farm management (Moran unpublished data). Such an approach can provide a focus for group discussions on the level of farm performance required for them to make the best use of imported stock and the magnitude of current constraints for farmers to achieve acceptable levels of herd performance and farm profits.
Conclusions
It is highly unlikely that the key environmental and management constraints to the performance of high quality dairy cows will ever be overcome on tropical small holder dairy farms. Therefore importers of such exotic stock should develop more realistic expectations of how much milk exotic animals will be able to produce in countries like Indonesia. Importing agencies unfairly blame the cows for their reduced performance compared to that of their counterparts (either dams or herd mates) still in their home environment. This is not the fault of the cows. It is the fault of the importers who provide overoptimistic predictions of milk yields, fertility and survivability and also the farmers themselves who cannot provide the appropriate levels of feeding, disease control and protection from the tropical climate, either through lack of knowledge or management skills.
Rarely can Friesian heifers originating from temperate herds where they might have produced 6000 L/yr or more of milk as matures cows, yield more than 4000 L/yr under current levels of farm management on most Indonesian small holdings. Furthermore, with the very poor levels of management that exist on many of these farms, they are even be more likely to die or be culled for poor fertility or milk yields, than the local more adapted dairy stock.
References
FAOSTAT (2008). FAO statistics on line. http://faostat.fao.org/site/569/DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=569
McDowell, R. E. (1994). Dairying with improved breeds in warm climates. Kinnic Publishers, Raleigh, NC, USA.
Moran, J. (2005). Tropical Dairy Farming. Feeding management for small holder dairy farmers in the humid tropics. Landlinks Press, CSIRO, Melbourne.
http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/197/issue/3363.htm
Moran, J. (2009). Farm business management for tropical dairy farmers. (in press) Landlinks Press, CSIRO, Melbourne.
