ABOVE The main cow shed has 160 cubicles that were all deep
green bedded before the current Dairy Co bedding trial.
RIGHT The Newton Rigg team at Northern Expo 2014 where they picked up several prizes.
BELOW RIGHT Talent Shottle Roxy VG87 is a fourth calver and completes 10 generations of VG or EX cows.
and Semex with about 40% genomic bulls and sexed semen used on maiden heifers and as a first service on cows.
The focus on sire selection is bulls that show good type, with plenty of chest width, not too straight legged and not high on the pins, but not forgetting milk and health and fitness traits. Current sires include: Vercile Flame, Envious, Bombero, Askew Reece, Shottle, Bolton, Glauco, McCutchen, Lottomax, Gillespy, Sahara Baloo, Doorman, Mincio, Impression, Album, Contract, Eddie, O’Kalif, Dempsey, Snowy, Endue and Silver with sexed Lincoln, Masterful, Smokin and DVD. “WebMate is helpful,
particularly as we have a lot of cows from different backgrounds and being able to keep an eye on inbreeding with the programme is very beneficial. We run it for cows and maidens and the report gives everyone an idea of what’s going on. With new bulls always coming in and breeding moving so quickly it is good to be able to rely on WebMate.”
The herd is currently averaging 9725kg at 3.89%bf and 3.28%p with a calving index of 411. It averages 74 days to first service with 81% submission rate and an average of 2.3 services per conception.
Calves are taken off their dam at the next milking and irrespective of whether they have sucked or
not they are fed six litres of colostrum. They are moved to a shed that has vented side sheets and a curtain on one side where they are individually penned for five to six days before joining a group of up to 40 calves on a Volac calf machine. The computerised machine builds the calves up and then weans them off between 75 and 80 days, they are also fed ad-lib course calf mixture and oat straw.
Once the calves are weaned they are moved and split with any bull
calves being kept for finishing moved to a round house and other bull calves sold. Heifers are then fed a standard 16% rearing nut on top of a mixture of straw, whole-crop and haylage. At six months old they are moved in to cubicles or turned out during the summer. The aim is to calve heifers between 23 and 24 months old.
Students benefit from a week each of farm duties with two or three students on farm from a Monday afternoon to a Monday morning. During that week they help out with milking and day to day chores, their courses also cover practical lessons on foot trimming, dehorning, signs of health and nutrition.
They also help with routine vaccination work and monitor growth rates on young stock.
A workshop on classification and breeding was held last year with Michael Parkinson and was well received by the students and is something that Jonathan hopes will happen again.
THE JOURNAL APRIL 2015 47
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