Dairying couple weather trying times

Colleen and David Fagan were not surprised that cutting back on dry cow therapy affected milk quality.

David and Colleen Fagan take pride in the quality of the milk their cows produce.

In fact their local veterinary practice, Dargaville Veterinary Centre, recognised the Fagans' good results recently with an award for the best overall milk quality in their area.

This recognition hasn't come around by accident.

Any average bulk tank somatic cell count for a season that's below 100,000 is a sign of consistently good milk quality and the couple achieved this three years in a row by overall carefully tailored mastitis risk management.

In the 2013/14 season their cell counts averaged just 90,000.

This was followed by 72,000 in 2014/15 (their award-winning season) and 75,000 in 2015/16.

The Fagans have run their family farm for more than 40 years at Hoanga, near Dargaville, with a manager and his son handling day-to-day operations.

The 110 effective hectares (120 total) carries a milking herd of 320 cows of various breeds. A tough spring set the current season off to a slow start.

"We're about 12 or 13 per cent down on this time last year, and that wasn't a great year to start with," Mr Fagan said.

But by early summer, conditions were improving and production was starting to catch up.

It's a challenging environment, frequently wet, with soils prone to pugging up in winter.

They had been running both autumn and spring-calving herds, but have since sold the autumn herd, which has made management more straightforward.

Like most in the dairy industry, the Fagans have found the sub-$5 payouts for the past two seasons difficult and they had to take a hard look at costs, animal health included.

One of the strategies used on this farm to achieve such high milk quality has been blanket treating their herd with Cepravin Dry Cow at drying off.

They found the treatment cured existing infections, helped prevent new infections during the dry period and at calving, and contributed to low somatic cell counts during the following lactation.

In 2016 the Fagans decided to cut back on dry cow therapy.

They stayed with the same product, but targeted only cows with relatively high average cell counts in the 2015/16 season (250,000 or more) and those that had been treated for clinical mastitis during the season.

Mr Fagan said it was a calculated move and likely to have an impact on milk quality in the 2016/17 season.

This season, both he and his veterinarian Joyce Gallaghan were surprised how quickly the economising showed up in the bulk tank somatic cell counts.

The number of clinical cases of mastitis is also much higher than usual for the season to date.

By mid-December more than 60 cases had been treated, compared with 32 cases for the whole of the previous season. All of this may have been acting as a brake on production.

The increase in average cell counts this season has not been dramatic, however.

Bulk tank cell counts have risen as high as 134,000 and are staying over 100,000 for now, but the Fagans had the luxury of starting from a very good position.

Joyce Gallaghan says the experience shows that cows apparently not infected at drying off could have still been flying under the radar with low-grade mastitis that spilled over into this season.

Mr Fagan is comfortable with the decision he made this past season, but it's likely to be a one-off.

And things are looking brighter with the current season Fonterra payout forecast at a more sustainable $6.50-$6.60kgMS.

"We'll be going back to blanket treating the herd at the end of this season," he said.