Boosting milk produced from forage will benefit the bottom line of almost any dairy business, according to dairy specialist Kingshay.

Richard Simpson, development director at Kinshay, believes that intensive, high-yielding systems can benefit from producing more milk from forage.

The main obstacles are insufficient farm tracks, inflexible fencing, and a desire to control the whole ration for management ease.

However visitors to this year's Grassland & Muck event will see there are plenty of ways around these barriers, with very little expenditure.

In a high yielding herd, Mr Simpsons suggests targeting grazing at lower yielding cows producing up to 30 litres per day, with appropriate concentrates fed in the parlour.

On average, Kingshay farmers produced 33 per cent of their milk from forage in the rolling year to February 2017.

Yields across the average and top 10 per cent of producers, analysed by their production from forage were similar at around 7,800 litres, but the top 10 per cent produced 55 per cent of that milk from forage.

As a result, their margin over purchased feed improved to 19.69p per litre against an average of 17.25p per litre, despite similar milk prices.

In contrast, the bottom quartile of producers had higher yields, at 8,122 litres, but only produced 16 per cent of that from forage, resulting in a margin of just 15.78p per litre.

Mr Simpson, who will be speaking at the event, said: "There is a lot of potential for the majority of herds, what is needed is belief and confidence in your system and then training of the appropriate management skills.

"Most cows are turned out now so the first stage is to look at how to get more from grazing this summer.

"Focussing on the figures really is worthwhile.

“If you benchmark you know where you are and can plan to move forward, it’s all about realising the true value of forage.

"Good farm tracks will extend your grazing season, but at drier times of the year they’re not essential.

“However, grazing well does require flexibility and more day to day management.

"It can help to get one person to take responsibility for this, and don’t forget to cut back on concentrate usage to allow the cows to actually achieve more from forage, or supplement where necessary.

"Those producers who always get the best silage do it through having the best management and staying in control of everything they can control.

“It’s about getting all the basics right at every stage.

"That does take effort but the returns really are worth it.”