soil

wind mill in Polder

maize and grass silage

artificial fertilizer

The Netherlands

We visited in 7 farms and one research station in Holland. The farms were quite big. One of them was 320 milking cows and it was in polder. We visited only one organic farm with Jersey cows and the farmer had is own way of farming. Most of the cows in Holland are Holstein.

Almost every farm use crop rotation because it’s good for the nutrients. Some of the farmers don’t use fertilizes but they use a lot of manure on the fields and give minerals straight to the cow. They feed the cows mostly by silage and maize about 70% and concentrates about 30%.

 

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 Soil

 

The soil in the Netherlands is very rich, and the most common soil class is clay. But there are also areas where is only sand, and areas where is a lot of turf. So soil is very variable in Holland for instance in the North is a lot of clay and in the middle of Holland is clay and sand, and in the South a lot of turf.

 

Polder

 

There is an area in Holland, which is old bottom of the sea. Nowadays it’s under the sea level because of the dykes. The soil is very rich there and mostly clay, and under the clay there is a sand layer. That kind of soil type needs special method of building cow sheds, because the buildings are sinking in to the ground. Also the right time of using machines on the fields is important, because otherwise clay gets stuck on tyres.

 

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Fertilizing

 

 

In the Netherlands there is lots of manure, that’s why they don’t fertilize so much. Usually they fertilize only before the first cut about 50 kg N/ha. This is necessary because then grass starts to grow faster. When you put manure on the field, the grass can use it only when the micro organisms change it into organic nitrogen. This takes 6-8 weeks, that’s why we fertilize.

 

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Roughage

 

In Holland they let the grass dry for two days, that’s because we have here a long growing season, so we don’t have to hurry and  need no acids. When the roughage is dry, the roughage is not more fast with going in heat.. The winters in the Netherlands is not so hard. The soil warms up easily quickly. So the grass starts more fast whit growing.  The disadvantage is that we have more losses, because we let the grass laying for two days.  The advantages there is more structure in the grass and we can let the roughage for 5 day’s in the barrow.

 

The maize silage has got the same process as with the grass. We use acid, and the silage has to be airtight. The difference between grass and maize is the nutrients, in maize there is 8-10% of protein but the cow needs about 13-15%. That means that the maize has got much less proteins. But the maize has got a lot of energy therefore it is not to good to use only maize.

 

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Crop rotation

 

In the Netherlands we have a lot of different kind of farming. The farms we have visit were only the farms whit milking cows.

The rotation of the crop is only whit grass and maize. Because we grow only the roughage what we need. The rest of the roughage what we need we buy. The by products we need we also buy.

The rotation is mostly ones in the eight years. It’s mostly from grass to grass and maize to maize. When we rotate grass land it goose in the same kind of grass. It’s only for making younger grass.  It’s depends on where the farmer has is land. The land how is far away, there is maize on it.

An another system is to do crop rotation. The years are the same but there is 6 years of grass and 2 years of maize. The first time when they put maize on the field they don’t use not so many slurry on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page updated 11.4.2006