WSFF Farm Tours

And how do you get 200 people from 30 countries onto farms that would interest them all? By coach of course, four of them and then offer a variety of different farm to see, depending on your preferred option. We were spoilt for choice and had to make that choice before we left Australia. Three or four farms were offered up depending on dairy, beef or dual-purpose. We Australians chose beef and dual-purpose but no-one was disappointed.

I personally was expecting to see a dairy type frame on a mainly broken coloured coat. This was far from reality. The cattle we saw would have slotted right into any herd at home. Big framed, well covered, easy doing cattle with a range of broken to mainly solid coat colour with the white face and feet and some eye patching.

You will see by the photos that biosecurity measures were a high priority at each farm. Shoe covers, disinfectant matts, hand sanitiser were in place at each stop. We also left our shoes behind in Austria before flying home.

Perschlingtal Tubling

Our first visit was to a dual-purpose Fleckvieh farm – Perschlingtal, Milch GesnbR, Pyhra, Lower Austria. This is a partnership between three farmers – Leopold Fischer, Stefan Moser and Josef Spendelhofer. They have paired together with a teaching facility also on the land where students learn all aspects of land and animal production. They aim for four to five cuts of hay in the year. Altitude: 300m above sea level

Rainfall: 800-900mm

Farm size: 50 ha of their own farmland and 83 ha of leased farmland (133 ha in total) Livestock: Currently 365 dairy cows, 250 offspring (130 of them at a partner farm) and 30 male calves (for sale to a fattening farm at a weight of 110 kg to 120 kg) Feed: TMR via a self-propelled feed mixer; 3 groups (cows being milked, dry cows, transit group). TMR consists of 50% maize and grass silage each, 6-7 kg brewer’s grains, molasses, protein concentrate, cereal mixture and minerals. We then moved on to a Fleckvieh fattening farm owned by the Roch family, Tulbing, Lower Austria. Initially run as a part-time business by Edeltraud and Ferdinand Roch, the farm became a full-time operation when the family built their own biogas plant in 2004. Since then, the Roch family farm has been steadily expanding. After starting with 30 cattle at the end of 2017, they built a new, modern, animal-friendly barn in 2020 and increased the number of animals to 320. At the same time, the Rochs began to rear calves in order to maximise the value added per cow. The barn for fattening cattle consists of cubicles with a paved surface, a manure scraper in the feeding area and litter bedding, and was built in a particularly animalfriendly manner in accordance with the AMA criteria for barn management. It was designed to accommodate 240 bulls.

The Fleckvieh bulls enter the new fattening barn at a live weight of around 200 kg and are sold after about 12 months at a weight of around 730 kg. Altitude: 206 m above sea level

Rainfall: 550–600 mm

Farm size: 180 ha of usable area, of which 155 ha are arable land and 25 ha are grassland Livestock: 320 animals for fattening, 80 of which are calves and weaner calves

Feed: Calves: 6 litres of milk replacer per animal/day via an automatic feeder and TMR made from chopped and dust-free barley straw, barley meal, grain maize meal, dried beet cuttings, soybean meal, linseed meal, fodder molasses and fodder acid. Share of concentrate feed:

initially 80 % before decreasing to 50 %; maize silage: starting at 1 % then increasing to 50 % Cattle from 200 kg to 750 kg: TMR consisting of 72 % maize silage, CornCob-Mix, alfalfa hay and concentrate (grain maize, barley meal, soybean meal, rapeseed meal, rapeseed cake, sunflower cake) The resulting biogas slurry is spread on the farm’s own land to meet the nutrient requirements of the soil. This high-quality liquid fertiliser eliminates the need for synthetic fertiliser and significantly increases the profitability of the farm’s crop production. The heat generated by the production of electricity is used to operate a drying plant all year round. Depending on the season, this facility is used to dry cereals, hay, alfalfa hay and grain maize, with the latter also serving as feed for the cattle.

The feed bunks here were lined with stainless steel where other farms had tiles, due to the acidity of the silage would eat away at the concrete flooring. We finished the day with a smoking barbecue of different cuts of beef from the bulls fattened here, cooked by an award winning barbecue chef. The meat was incredible. Our next visit was to a semen collection centre called Genostar where the bulls kept here were paraded for our viewing. The Genostar insemination organisation is owned by farmers and breeders from the Austrian states of Lower Austria (NÖ Genetik) and Styria (Rinderzucht Steiermark), which are therefore its main areas of activity. In its capacity as a representative of Austrian cattle breeders, Genostar’s primary task is to optimise and maximise advances in breeding in the interests of cattle farmers. They therefore run an aggressive and modern breeding programme for the Fleckvieh breed while using as much information from genotyping as possible. This is based on a population of 130,000 Fleckvieh cows in herds with very different conditions of production, ranging from intensive forage farming to extensive mountain farming areas. They genotype about 2,800 male calves per year. The animals are raised in performance testing stations, with approximately 40 young Fleckvieh bulls going into insemination breeding each year. Together with the breeding associations NÖ Genetik and Rinderzucht Steiermark and their cooperation partners, they aim to breed high-performing, harmonious, well-balanced and fit Fleckvieh cows.

Key figures of the breeding programme: • 130,000 herdbook cows • Insemination rate: 96.7% • Performance testing capacity (Rosenau and Kalsdorf stations): 180 places • 3,000 males genotyped each year • 8,000 females genotyped each year • Input: 40 young Fleckvieh bulls each year

The official Gala Dinner and Closing Ceremony was held on a boat cruise on the Danube where presentations to and from the delegates from each country were given. Australia presented the President of Fleckvieh Austria, Sebastian Auernig with one of our 50th Anniversary Belt Buckles.

Gala Dinner presentation - Presentation of belt buckle to Sebastian Auernig with Phillip Partridge, Peter Wenn and Felicity Reeves