Voxpop: flying the flag for Friesians
"They do fantastic production and they are placid, great to handle and work with. Striving to breed a better cow gives you something to look forward to, a reason to get out of bed, rather than just milking the same old cow."
"You milk what you love and we love the black-and-whites. My parents had them so it is in my blood. They are big, happy and capacious."
"It has a lot of income streams — bull calves can be sold as beef animals and don't need to be bobbied. When a cow ends up leaving the farm, you get a far better return on her than a smaller cow. They have pedigree, so you can follow bloodlines as a hobby — it's not racing cars or following the horses, it is a hobby of following your cows — that's the appeal."
"They are the best all-round breed because of production and inputs and if you want a beef bull to finish off after AB [artificial breeding], then you've got a good beef animal, where if you put a beef bull over some other dairy breeds, you've got a lighter animal. We've always been Friesians and always will be."
"They last a long time, they have longevity, their udders last and they are good for walking. They are a good all-round cow."
"The animal is more than just milk, as they have a bull calf for beef. They are nice, big and friendly cows."
"The are the best converter of grass to milk. Unless you are using sexed semen, half of them are going to have bull calves and a bull calf out of a Friesian cow is worth so much more money. It is added value. I'm black-and-white through and through."
"It is a multi-purpose breed, as there is a market for the unwanted bulls and you need fewer animals, as they are a bigger cow, so when it comes to per-animal costs, you have more production per animal and your animal costs are the same."
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Voxpop: flying the flag for Friesians
Clint Cummings, of Wyndham. "They do fantastic production and they are placid, great to handle and work with. Striving to breed a better cow gives you something to look forward to, a reason to get out of bed, rather than just milking the same old cow." "You milk what you love and we love the black-and-whites. My parents had them so it is in my blood. They are big, happy and capacious." "It has a lot of income streams — bull calves can be sold as beef animals and don't need to be bobbied. When a cow ends up leaving the farm, you get a far better return on her than a smaller cow. They have pedigree, so you can follow bloodlines as a hobby — it's not racing cars or following the horses, it is a hobby of following your cows — that's the appeal." "They are the best all-round breed because of production and inputs and if you want a beef bull to finish off after AB [artificial breeding], then you've got a good beef animal, where if you put a beef bull over some other dairy breeds, you've got a lighter animal. We've always been Friesians and always will be." "They last a long time, they have longevity, their udders last and they are good for walking. They are a good all-round cow." "The animal is more than just milk, as they have a bull calf for beef. They are nice, big and friendly cows." "The are the best converter of grass to milk. Unless you are using sexed semen, half of them are going to have bull calves and a bull calf out of a Friesian cow is worth so much more money. It is added value. I'm black-and-white through and through." "It is a multi-purpose breed, as there is a market for the unwanted bulls and you need fewer animals, as they are a bigger cow, so when it comes to per-animal costs, you have more production per animal and your animal costs are the same."
Otago Daily Times
27-05-2025
- Otago Daily Times
Pasture quality can aid liveweight gain
Managing pasture quality offers massive potential for improving bull performance. That was the key message from a Mid Northern North Island Beef Council Beef Production Field Days event. The most efficient conversion of pasture to liveweight gain (LWG) is achieved when bulls experience high growth rates. For example, a bull growing at 0.5kg/day uses a mere 27% of its feed intake for liveweight gain; the other 73% is used for maintenance. A bull growing at 1.5kg/day uses 53% — more than half — of its intake for liveweight gain and only 47% for maintenance. That means the higher the growth rate, the greater the percentage of feed intake that goes into liveweight gain and therefore profit. The positive impact of this efficient liveweight gain is compounded by the bull reaching finishing weight earlier, thereby freeing up feed otherwise required for that animal's maintenance, ongoing. Feed conversion efficiency A Friesian bull grows from 300kg to 600kg. It goes on to pasture cover of 2800kg of dry matter per hectare (DM/ha) and grazes it down to 1500kgDM/ha. Assuming the highest quality of feed is available, with 11 megajoules of metabolisable energy per kilogram of dry matter (MJME/kgDM), the fastest the bull could reach its finishing weight of 600kg would be 29 weeks. Compare this with the 113 weeks it would take to hit finishing weight if the animal was on 9MJME/kgDM quality pasture. With the bull reaching its finishing weight so quickly — within 29 weeks, compared with 113 weeks — enough feed is freed up to finish, for example, either: • 44 lambs at 40kg (from an initial weight of 25kg), or • four more bulls. The average feed quality on Waikato bull farms is 10MJME/kg DM. A bull would finish within 44 weeks (compared with 113 weeks on 9MJME/kgDM), freeing up enough feed to finish either: • 22 lambs, or • three more bulls. Metabolisable energy The most important nutritional limitation for bulls is insufficient metabolisable energy (ME) intake. Bull liveweight gain increases as pasture quality increases. Why? Because the higher the pasture quality, the higher its ME content per kilogram of DM. Feeding a bull more of a low-quality pasture does not compensate for the lower ME/kgDM. Pasture quality Impact of pasture variables on quality: Higher-quality pasture contains more green material, higher ratios of clover to grass and leaf to stem, more young (recently grown) content than older content, and cooler temperatures. Lower-quality pasture has more dead material, lower clover to grass and leaf to stem ratios, more older material, and warmer temperatures. Clover leaf declines most slowly, grass leaf declines more quickly, and stem declines most quickly. Diet selection and feed quality: The higher a pasture cover, the greater opportunity a bull has to select what it chooses to eat. It will choose the highest-quality components first. So, as overall pasture cover decreases, so does the overall pasture quality. You then see a lower dry matter intake, because of the lower-quality pasture. The key is to move young stock off grazed pasture sooner rather than later. The lower-quality feed left behind can be cleaned up by low-priority stock or by topping. — Beef + Lamb New Zealand
