Farm systems research at Ruakura – a 60-year legacy underpinning profitable and sustainable pasture-based dairy systems

Challenges and opportunities for conducting on-farm research

“…Research farms are essential for work that could have a long-term negative impact on business performance (e.g., introduction of weeds, pests and disease) or requires specific resources (e.g., rumen-fistulated animals to study methanogens or quarantine facilities to study disease). Research farms might also be required in farmlet (i.e., small, replicated farm) studies where an elevated level of control, measurement, and monitoring is required (e.g., Macdonald et al 2008, Macdonald andRoche 2023). In contrast, commercial farms are essential to identify how innovations work at scale, across different regions, and/or under less-controlled conditions, such as exploring how best to defer grazing over summer to improve pasture resilience (e.g., Tozer et al 2020).…”

“…Last, while performing research on commercial farms has appeared cheap in comparison to research farms, there remain barriers (Table 1) to successfully implementing field research with stringent requirements within commercial systems. This is particularly observable in field research that focuses on issues that are difficult to explore on commercial farms, such as drench resistance (e.g., Miller et al 2012), system-level management (e.g., Macdonald and Roche 2023), or animal behaviour (e.g., Zobel et al 2019).…”

Development of a Robust Sensor Calibration for a Commercially Available Rising Platemeter to Estimate Herbage Mass on Temperate Seminatural Pastures

“…Knowledge of available herbage mass is decisive in grazing management to assure sufficient nutrient and energy intakes for grazing animals, to adjust their supplemental feeding in barns with concentrate or additional roughage, and to efficiently use available forage resources on grasslands while avoiding their long-term degradation due to underor overexploitation [7]. Stocking density as well as the duration and frequency of grazing need to be closely adjusted to the available herbage mass on pastures, particularly in the case of grazing schemes such as strip grazing, rotational grazing, or short-grass grazing (German: Kurzrasenweide) [8,9]. More so, increasing variability in weather conditions and thus plant growth rates between and within years due to climate change may require more opportunistic grassland use [10].…”

The Impact of Accumulating Herbage Masses in Autumn on Perennial Ryegrass Sward Characteristics

“…Perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.; PRG) is the preferred species in temperate pasture-based systems [1] as it has the ability to produce large quantities of high-quality herbage [2], as well as being able to withstand intensive grazing [3]. Previous research [4] identified increasing the proportion of grazed grass in the diet of animals as an important objective of pasture-based systems, in addition to improving the environmental and economic sustainability within the farm system [5][6][7]. One way to increase the proportion of grazed grass in the diet is the extension of the grazing season, which has been reported to increase overall farm profitability by reducing feed and labour costs [6] and has been shown to be correlated with the reduction in the carbon footprint of milk [8].…”