Land and Food Resources Dookie Campus

Latest Report: April 18, 2008

	This Week	Last Week
Cow numbers (in vat)	132	132
Herd milk yield (l/d)	2,730	2,789
Herd fat yield (kg/d)	120	121
Herd protein yield (kg/d)	95	97
Fat test (%) *	4.40 (4.83)	4.34 (4.83)
Protein test (%) *	3.49 (3.64)	3.49 (3.66)
Cow milk yield (l/cow/d)	20.7	21.1
Grain (kg/cow)	8.5	9
Silage/hay (kg DM/cow)	5.6	5.6
Bacto	0	0
Bulk milk cell count (‘000 cells/ml) *	207 (250)	221 (255)
Margin over brought in feed costs ($)	4.46	4.40
* Factory averages are given in brackets for fat and protein % and BMCC

	Year to Date	Last Year to Date
Lactation milk yield (l)	763,063	864,239
Lactation fat yield (kg)	29,647	32,802
Lactation protein yield (kg)	23,427	28,081

This has been a week of daily management routines for the Dookie dairy. The rotation is gradually being lengthened out to keep fed in front of the cows and is now at 40 days.

The Science, Technology and Innovation Project has been developing a Smart Irrigation Controller System to improve the efficiency of flood irrigation. The controller uses information from sensors in the irrigation bays to work with Rubicon automatic gates. The sensors are halfway down the bay and at the end, and the controller is able to calculate the rate of flow using information on all the bay parameters.

The goal is to allow water to reach the end of the bay but to minimize run-off. The project carries out a full water balance, recording leaching, run-off, dry matter removal through cattle and information from the weather station to assess the efficiency of the system.

Although the most efficient form of irrigation would be some form of centre pivot irrigators these are expensive to install and so uptake is likely to be low. The Smarter Irrigation Technology Project aims to develop a system that can be fitted to existing infrastructure at minimal cost. The automatic gates are a popular item and we would like to have them on all the irrigation bays!