ABOVE RIGHT Moving to the rotary has reduced milking time by half despite numbers tripling.
LEFT Heifer calves are contract reared from four to six weeks old until they are three weeks off calving.
week. One job that they carry out is cleaning the parlour, with it scrubbed thoroughly every three days. This combined with a teat brush to pre-clean before milking has contributed to the bactoscan dropping to 13. “We have had to learn how
staff work best, it is important for them to enjoy their work and that way we get the most out of them. Some have struggled with electronic interpretation, but we have worked to make sure everyone knows how to access and understand the information available. Staff have areas of responsibility and that seems to be working well.”
John has always been a cow man and he looks after cow management and breeding. “I aim to breed a functional type with our milk contract driving focus to components. The best bull we’ve used has been Outside, his daughters were powerhouses and the sort of easily managed cows I’d like a herd of. “We have had to buy in a lot of cows to increase our numbers and as well as 205 heifers from Luxembourg we also purchased fresh cows from Leedham, Whinchat, Marshdale, Hydaways, Rossett, Bassingthorpe, Corringham and Kilton. “We added some really good cows and strong families with our purchases including the Sara family, as well as Willsbro Lightning Rose. She is a VG88 scored Lylehaven Lightning daughter in her fourth lactation
with eight generations of VG or EX behind her. “I would still say the Bess family are the strongest family in the herd, they descend from Astre sired embryos purchased out of Lylehaven Chairman Bo EX, one of four generations of straight excellent cows.”
Classifying is something that John thinks is as important in a large herd as it highlights the strengths and weaknesses. “It is always good to get an outsider’s point of view, making you focus on specific areas when breeding and selecting bulls.” John carries out most of the AI’ing, using sexed semen on most of the cows, while the bottom end and any problem cows get beef. ”I’m achieving 38% conception to first service which I’m pleased with. We are using a lot of sexed genomic semen, mainly from Semex and some from Genus. I prefer to choose the bull not the company, so whoever is marketing the bulls that I think suit best gets the order,” adds John. The main current sires are Brekem, Masterful, Lincoln and Artist Red. A stock bull is also kept to serve any problem cows, the bull in the pen at the moment is Sterndale Radiate, a Numero Uno son out of Sterndale Goldwyn Rae EX92. To ensure heifers are given the same attention during rearing they are sent to John’s father in law Trevor Rowbotham to contract rear. They go away at between four and six weeks old, before they need TB testing and return three weeks prior to calving, all being served to sexed semen. Trevor takes care of vaccinations, freeze branding, cubicle and self locking yoke training. “We use self locking yokes for Ai’ing, scanning and vet visits, once they are trained it is a stress free way of working with them,” says John. John has recently completed a scanning course so he is able to do more himself and again reduce costs. The vet has routine fortnightly visits for routine fertility and Ov-Sync programmes, but also trains staff to be pro- active and to be able to deal with more minor issues themselves. Rich Stirton also visits fortnightly to carry out foot trimming as well as some scanning and he helps with relief milking.
Being forward thinking, young and enthusiastic John and Andrew are always reviewing the farm and are ready to embrace change when it is needed. They are always reviewing the costs and management of the farm with independent business advisors.
“The cost of production is an ever changing goal post, every six months we calculate the cost with our advisor, it is something that is hard to calculate because there is so much to factor in – ideally we should calculate every three months.
“The aim going forward is to have surplus heifers to sell. At the moment the average age of calving is 26 months, but as we reach the aim of 24 months there should be more heifers entering the herd and more to sell.”
THE JOURNAL FEBRUARY 2015 27
POINT ROTARY
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