Traditionally the herd at Green Farm has been all year calving, but Dan is now looking to run an Autumn block system.
“I have been ‘flirting’ with the idea of block calving for a while, and decided to put in a two-month calving gap two years ago,” says Dan. “It proved to be a really useful couple of months and gave everyone on the farm more focus and allowed us to take a more targeted approach to completing specific tasks around the farm.
“This summer, I was lucky enough to have a group of 30 AHDB employees come to the farm as part of a two-day staff training programme. I had 30 specialists complete a SWOT strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis on the farm, and the consistent feedback was that an Autumn block calving approach would best suit our system.”
Four years ago, heifers were first calving down at around 27 months, but now they are averaging 24.7 months and Dan is looking to drive this age down further, as well as improve overall herd fertility.
“A real benefit has been the recent implementation of collars to measure rumination and cow activity. This is helping us to spot those cows showing more subtle signs of heat, that might usually have been missed, as well as identify cows showing early signs of potential illness – allowing us to intervene early and prevent a sub-clinical issue becoming a more serious, clinical health problem,“ adds Dan.
While the last four and a half years have proved to be incredibly busy and challenging, things are starting to head in the right direction.
“Over just the last year, yields have gone up by an average of 1,200 litres” concludes Dan. “Our milk from forage figures are strong and feed costs are currently at 6.5ppl, so we are in a good position and I am confident that with continued focus, we can carry on improving the productivity of the herd and the efficiency of the overall business.”