Description
Auke Spijkerman and his parents Ton and Ria have a farm in the North of the Netherlands. The farmers can be labelled as really fanatical grazers, this is be-cause the company aims to get as much fresh grass in the cows as possible. The farmers have the opinion that a high intake of fresh grass has a positive effect on the margin and that the mineral losses are limited as much as possible. The Spijkerman family uses the Agrinet grassland management program to ensure that the grazing runs smoothly. Every week Auke runs a round through all the parcels available for grazing the milking cows, during that round he measures the grass supply with a pasture meter in each field. He enters this data into the program, to get a good overview of the current stock of grass on the farm. The system stores all data, so that the pro-duction of all individual parcels can also be checked afterwards. According to the farmers, a tight grass-land management is necessary to get the maximum out of grazing.
Reason for the innovation
The farmer applies a New Zealand farming system, because he believes that a low cost price agricultural operations, improves the profit. He is focussing on the efficiency of fresh grass. That is why he applies strip stocking.
- Achievements: Increase in fresh grass intake and milk production
- Results: Lower costs of the milk production
Farm description
Environment
- Soil: Sandy
- Climate: Temperate oceanic
- Altitude: ±sea level
- Slope: flat
Grassland management
- Grazing: Yes
- Grazing management: Strip stocking
- Length of grazing periode: 8 months/year
- Main composition grassland: Perennial ryegrass, timothy grass, red and white clovers, goose grass, chicory
Structure
- Annual work units (AWU): 2,4
- Agricultural Area 70 ha UAA
- Permanent grassland 70 ha
- Production method: Conventional
- Stock
- 90 dairy cows
- 43 young stock
- Breed MRIJ, Fleckvieh Jersey, Holstein-Friesian, Brown Swiss,; Swedish Red
Animal performance
- Milk production: 6500 kg/year
Why it is working
The innovation is successful on this farm because:
- The farmer has a passion for grazing.
- There is a balance between cows and grazing platforms
- The labor intensive is low, the farmer can spend more time about grass management
