Production queen retains her crown

Perhaps there’s something in the water out Berrigan way, or maybe something in the feed on Graeme and Heather Spunner’s dairy farm.

Their Holstein herd continues to record milk production volumes way above the average, but in the past year, the Spunners thought their star cow may not have lasted the season.

Graeme describes their top production cow, Lulu, as remarkable and when she came into the herd this season she was looking magnifi cent.

She became the second cow in Australia to record 20,000 litres in two lactations, and Graeme was looking forward to another exceptional year.

But one day last year she came limping into the yard and Graeme could see she had damaged her stifl e, a crucial hind leg joint, similar in human terms to a knee.

“We can only guess that another cow had jumped on her,” he said.

“Normally a cow that does a stifl e would go dry, but she just kept going and going.”

Lulu, now in her fi fth lactation, produced 20,671 litres in 305 days by February this year. This included 595kg of protein and 558kg of butterfat.

Recognised by Holstein Australia as Master Breeders in 2019, the Spunners have been herd testing since 1995 and rely on the fi gures to fi nd out which cows are really performing.

“We do it because sometimes you have a cow that you think is good, but they are not necessarily that good when you test,” Heather said.

“Lots of good cows milk out really quickly and you might think they are not so good.”

Lulu’s injured stifl e wasn’t the only drama for the production queen; in her fourth lactation she suff ered a left displaced abdomen, requiring on-farm surgery.

“We’d noticed she was not eating in the bail,” Graeme recalled.

The vet carried out the surgery, sewed her up, and Lulu was back in the paddock in short time.

Accompanying her production fi gures was a very low cell count, an amazing feat considering she had been unwell.

Lulu’s mother was another Spunner cow, Jammer Lulu, and her sire was Ladino Park Nash, who had a genetic background with Max Hart’s farm at Numurkah.

Lulu has some good company on the Tellamore Park farm; the herd averages more than 10,000 litres (the Australian average is 6100 litres) and the farm has produced more than 100 cows that have done more than 1000kg of milk solids in a lactation.

While not taking anything away from Lulu, the Spunners, including son Shane, endeavour to feed their cattle well and rely on nutritional advice.

The 250-head milking herd is pasture-based for six months of the year and for the remainder fed a mixture of cereals, silage, rye-grass and sub through a mixer wagon.

Their feed intake is supplemented by grain in the bail of the 50-stand rotary.

Graeme rarely uses artifi cial insemination and believes the genetic indexes are overrated. The Spunners run a paddock bull with the herd and breed their own replacement calves.

Berrigan dairy farmer Graeme Spunner. Heather Spunner at the rotary dairy.

Lulu photographed two years ago before some of her health dramas. Lulu is among Australia’s top performing Holstein cows. She was producing 46 litres a day on a seven-day average in February.