Dairy HIGH 2

Project details

Status: Current

Substantial partnership

The Australian dairy industry is set to benefit from a $6.5 million partnership between TIA and Dairy Australia.

The substantial five-year agreement will deliver a national dairy research and industry development program to drive profitability and sustainability for Australian dairy farmers.

The program Dairy HIGH 2 (short for ‘high integrity grass-fed herds’) will focus on feedbase research to help dairy farmers maintain efficient, profitable and sustainable pasture based dairy systems into the future.

The partnership between Dairy Australia and TIA is an extension of a successful research partnership first commenced in 2012.

Ambitious target to help dairy farmers

An ambitious target has been set to help dairy farmers grow the same amount of dry forage matter from irrigated pasture, produce the same amount of milk solids per hectare, but halve the amount of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser.

The research is targeting significant sustainability gains in pasture production through efficient nitrogen fertiliser use and the reduction of a key input cost for dairy farms. It will directly benefit farmers in temperate pasture based dairy regions across Australia.

'Mini farms'

A key part of the program will be the establishment of farmlets or 'mini farms' to test research theories under real farm conditions.

This innovative approach to research is not happening anywhere else in Australia and will involve managing four separate dairy herds under different pasture mixes at the TIA Dairy Research Facility at Elliott, North West Tasmania.

Program activities

The partnership incorporates a range of other activities within Dairy HIGH 2 including:

• Value-adding measures for non-replacement dairy calves.
• Pasture coaching and advanced workshops
• Dairy benchmarking and Dairy Business of the Year Awards
• Business groups
• On-farm discussion groups

Farmlet Reports