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XtraBlatt Issue 02-2021

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FEATURE HÜSECKEN FARM,

FEATURE HÜSECKEN FARM, TIEFENDORF THE FEED OPTIMISERS Times are hard for milk producers. Things are no different on the Hüsecken farm to the south of the Ruhr Valley in Germany, where the Hüsecken family keep a worried eye on the milk price. However, rather than complaining about the situation, the entire family are making adjustments where they can, and doing so with great success The Hüsecken GbR business currently manages around 220 dairy cows and the followers. It is a sunny morning. The cattle are feeding in the shed. Others are lying in their cubicles sleeping. Marc Cassel is sitting at his computer checking the data recorded by the diet feeder in the past few days. “It’s really important for us that the proportion of the components in our basic ration are exactly in line with the guidelines and that we stick precisely to the mixing times," explains Marc, the future son-in-law of co-owner Dirk Hüsecken. Marc is in charge of feeding on this mixed farm. The family farms around 140ha of grassland as well as another 125ha of arable land. There are 220 dairy cows in the shed. Along with the calves, almost 500 animals have to be fed. “This means we have quite substantial feed requirements," Marc says. A trained farmer, he understands the importance of feed for milk yields and he does everything possible to find the best compromise between milk yield and feed costs. The successful dairy farm has a long history. The farm got a proper boost in terms of development when the brothers Dirk and Ulrich Hüsecken got on board. “Back then we had twelve cows living in a shed, as well as a few hectares of grassland and tillage," Dirk reports. Dirk and his brother pursued a consistent growth strategy which focussed in particular on purchasing land. The business, which was changed to a private company in 2002, now farms 265ha and a 220-head dairy herd. However, the land bought down through the years is scattered over quite a large area, which does not make their job any easier. “Our average field size is 2–2.5ha. In addition, most of the land is on the slopes on the southern edge of the Ruhr Valley.” To nevertheless keep the feed costs under control, they have meticulously adjusted their processes to these structures over the years, in particular the sequence in which the fields are harvested. A contracting business 18 19