“RuFO greatly improved our fertility”

Richard Newell is a dairy farmer from Corbally, Co Down. He is happy to share his experience with the AHV RuFO+: “We were involved in a RuFO trial with two groups in our herd; one group was fed RuFO and the other wasn’t. Body condition scores and dung scores were much improved in the RuFO cows.”

Regular dung sieves showed the RuFO cows were digesting the diet better and getting better use of their feed. When we added RuFO to our TMR, the silage stopped heating and feed quality was maintained. We found the RuFO cows had greater feed efficiency as they ate less but results showed they produced more milk than expected.

Heats much stronger

Our fertility while using RuFO was greatly improved. Heats in the RuFO group were much stronger and longer lasting. The average number of straws used in the RuFO cows was just 1.9 straws compared to 3.1 straws in the cows who didn’t receive RuFO. This has been a huge cost saving to us. The RuFO cows went back in calf sooner and we reduced our calving interval by 21 days.

Great return on investment

The AHV team were able to lay all this information out for me with costs and return on investment. This was instrumental when deciding if we should go back onto RuFO. We were able to see the financial gain of using the product and have continued to feed RuFO after the trial had ended.