Research

The Southern Dairy Hub (SDH) is carrying out comparative demonstration at scale, looking at a Standard Herd and a Future Herd, which is focused on greater individual cow performance. Words Southern Dairy Hub.

In this episode, Anne Lee speaks to Andrea Dixon, General Manager of the Southern Dairy Hub, and Dawn Dalley, Senior Scientist at DairyNZ. Andrea provides a background on the farm’s history, how it’s set up, what’s on the agenda over the coming season and HubWatch - an easy to access, online way of getting the latest information from the Southern Dairy Hub.

Dawn explains the latest side-by-side herd study which is comparing a “standard herd” run at a 3.1 cows/ha stocking rate with a”future herd” of high genetic merit cows run at a lower stocking rate of 2.9 cows/ha. She gives an update on the first season’s results and shares insights from other studies including research on wintering practices with interesting insights into the importance of soil wetness compared with pugging depth.

DairyNZ, AgResearch and Fonterra researchers are working together to better understand the issue of heat stress and the Southern Dairy Hub is one of the research farms. By Andrea Dixon.

Researchers have taken a look at dairy farming from the cows’ perspective. By Elaine Fisher

A Taranaki scientific team is testing the development of a rapid antigen test (RAT) for the detection of facial eczema (FE). By Elaine Fisher.

How would you lead the conversation? University of Canterbury researcher Franca Buelow asks.

Ever wondered where all those stats come from about how much a cow can eat? By Karen Trebilcock.