zero grazing

caff

Seeing zero grazing mentioned a lot in newspapers recently. What exactly is it?
How does it affect an animals welfare? Is it US style battery cow farming?

Timmaay

In the Irish grassland situation, usually not, the cows would be still grazing one block of land, it's typically used to bring grass from an outside block of land, and fed to their cows in the feeding passage for an hour after milking. The other situation is during very wet weather, where the cows are better off indoors (even if "battery style"), if they were outside they would be covered in muck and have the fields ploughed up totally.

caff

Timmaay wrote: »

In the Irish grassland situation, usually not, the cows would be still grazing one block of land, it's typically used to bring grass from an outside block of land, and fed to their cows in the feeding passage for an hour after milking. The other situation is during very wet weather, where the cows are better off indoors (even if "battery style"), if they were outside they would be covered in muck and have the fields ploughed up totally.

That's good to hear, is there a danger though that some farmers could move to a factory farm style system here. I think it is quite engrained in peoples minds that Irish cows are in fields not sheds and that image of cows being packed together all year round would damage the reputation and product of Irish dairy.

Timmaay

Unlikely, our only advantage is grass, large indoor herds are a higher cost high input/output system, with lower margins, they suit the US etc where maize is extremely cheap, and you have the economy of scale with 1000acre fields etc. Farmland in general in Ireland is far too fragmented and expensive with zero economics of scale. Specifically on zero grazing, several studies have shown that it's not really a viable method of expansion for dairy farmers who have maxed out the stocking rate of their current milking block, there is a considerable increase in the workload, with daily cutting and drawing of the grass, alongside the extra slurry spreading.

tanko

caff wrote: »

That's good to hear, is there a danger though that some farmers could move to a factory farm style system here. I think it is quite engrained in peoples minds that Irish cows are in fields not sheds and that image of cows being packed together all year round would damage the reputation and product of Irish dairy.

Most consumers around the word dont care how their food is produced, they only care how much it costs to buy.

Sam Kade

caff wrote: »

That's good to hear, is there a danger though that some farmers could move to a factory farm style system here. I think it is quite engrained in peoples minds that Irish cows are in fields not sheds and that image of cows being packed together all year round would damage the reputation and product of Irish dairy.

It isn't doing any damage to dairying in the US.

kowtow

Interestingly (or not) the concept of zero grazing has been well known as long as modern dairy farming - certainly since before 1900, and long before the advent of milking machine and subsequently parlours.

It was all the rage in the US even 120 odd years ago, and it used to be known as "soiling". Higher productivity, feed intake, and better utilisation of grass were the reasons given back then.

Bear in mind that winter in many of the US dairy stronghold states would be longer and harder than ours, and paddock grazing at the intensity practised nowadays wasn't possible until the invention of the electric fence. Bad enough moving a wire twice a day, I wouldn't fancy doing that with a dry stone wall.

frogloch

tanko wrote: »

Most consumers around the word dont care how their food is produced, they only care how much it costs to buy.

Sad but true otherwise we would be getting the best price in the world.:(