Homegrown feed is one of the strongest drivers of profitable, resilient dairy farm systems in New Zealand. Lifting the amount of pasture and crop grown and eaten can improve operating profit per hectare and help reduce emissions intensity.

As a feed advisor, your insights help shape resilient, productive, and sustainable farm systems. This section of the website is for you; it will give you practical support to strengthen relationships and add value at every step.

Understand the additional cost of feeding supplements for extra milk production. Read more on the research to learn how marginal milk costs compare to milk price and profitability.

Missed a Progressing Dairy event? This episode features key takeaways from a Maximising Homegrown Feed event at Waimakariri contract milkers Will and Sarah Gard's farm, who share insights alongside Senior Scientist Dawn Dalley.

Animal feed can affect animal health, milk quality and food safety, and the source of dairy products can be important to buyers and consumers. That’s why it’s important when buying and selling feed, it can be traced to its origin.

Feed density and storage are crucial for dairy farming. Proper planning optimises storage solutions and maximises feed resources. Use our tables to help calculate storage space requirements when planning new or evaluating current storage.

A pasture feed wedge is a tool that visually displays your farm's current pasture situation. By ranking your paddocks based on average pasture cover, it can help you make proactive decisions about pasture management.

Feed quality, often quantified as metabolisable energy (ME) per kilogram of dry matter (MJME/kg DM or M/D), is as crucial as feed quantity for dairy farming. High M/D value means better feed as it has more usable energy.

The FeedChecker calculator is a robust way to ensure you are optimising feed allocation throughout the year.

Choose from a one-page Simple Feed Budget Calculator, Simple Feed Budget with Body Condition Score (BCS) Calculator, the Monthly Feed Budget, or Annual Feed Budget.