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offering advice and this led to him travelling over, Dad, myself and three employees plus two neighbours all benefitted from his foot trimming course.” Since the course the farm now trims cows at 100 and 200 days in milk and at drying off to try to prevent problems rather than cure them. In 2013 Anna won the President’s Medal and her prize included a trip of her choice and having been to the Royal Winter Fair the previous year looking at cows Tom and Anna decided they would like to take a trip to look at staff and cow management. This time travelling to Wisconsin and taking in the World Dairy Expo. “We took to social media to ask for recommendations of places to visit and tailored the trip to suit ourselves. We wanted to look at more commercial milk production and with the exception of Sandy- Valley and Luck-E we visited large scale commercial units. “The farms varied in size from around 500 - 9000 cows and considering these farms weren’t trying to sell us genetics we were amazed how much time they were willing to give us especially since there was just two of us. The people were happy to show us around every aspect of their farm, and since we only organised two or three farms a day we had time for a full tour.
“When there is just two of you visiting it’s more like a conversation than a tour, we got to ask an unlimited number of questions and the farmers were really interested in what we do too.”
The exception to this pattern was our visit to Sandy Valley, our heads were boggled by the numbers and we had a half hour slot to view the herd before the next tour began. The herd was tremendous and it was really great to see the families of bulls
we are using preforming so well. Other herds we visited included Rosendale, Central Sands, Pine Breeze and Shiloh and most of the visits were arranged through Facebook.
"One thing we left America certain of was that cows should be lying on sand, however, as I waited to board the plane home I received a text notifying me of another price cut. “Unfortunately, any plans I had have been curbed until there is some certainty in the future of the dairy industry.” Another area that Tom focussed on when he returned from University was concrete grooving to try to solve the problem of cows slipping and going down. Tom referred to the Farming Forum to find examples and suggestions for grooving and after research and recommendations he opted for Vermot, a French company. “I wouldn’t have had confidence to go with Vermot if it hadn’t been for recommendations because it looks so severe. It is deep straight grooves and we’ve found it highly effective, over two visits we have had all the yards and cubicle passages grooved.”
One advantage Tom has seen in social media is keeping up to date with the latest news on genomics. He feels that genomics are moving so fast that published press can be too slow in getting the latest information out and the internet and social media are the quickest ways to keep informed. Mike and Tom don’t often go away together, but they do try to attend the Gold Cup Open Days each year, Mike says: “The Gold Cup Open Day offers one of the best opportunities in the country to look at successful farm businesses. The winners of the Gold Cup offer the whole package and it is always interesting to see their farms.”
#ratemytrim
Examples of the #ratemytrim thread Tom started on twitter to discuss foot trimming.
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