HERFS/AUTUMN BONUS TYDSKRIF 2026

Setting the benchmark Part 1: Achieving excellence through phase feeding Danie van Wyk – Technical Advisor: Extensive ruminants & Dairy Livestock farming today has evolved froman art to a scientifically and technologically driven business. To ensure the best margin over inputs, farmers need to utilise advisors to stay up to date with the latest technology, global scientific discoveries, and optimal production systems. Producers should review their productions over the past year and, with those figures kept inmind, draw up figures to aim for in the coming year. Producers should adopt a holistic approach based on scientific practices. There are a lot of factors that will influence the margins of the producers, and these can be factors like the weather, which the producer cannot fully predict or manage. The producer should instead focus on the factors that they can manage and have an influence on, like animal selection practices, supplementary feeding strategy, management of personnel, financial management and pasture/veld management. In my opinion, for a goat farmer to set the benchmark and maximise profits, it is essential to efficiently increase the kilograms of lamb produced per ewe per hectare. For a producer to achieve this, they need to effectively increase twin births, weaning rate, weaning weights, post-weaning growth, longevity and survival of ewes, and reproduction rates. See Table 1 for a summary of the differences in approach by highly profitable farmers and less profitable farmers. “You cannot just continue doing the same thing again and again and expect a different result each time” – Andrew Vizard (2002). www.agribonus.co.za Herfs/Autumn 2026 BONUS 47