I would like to thank the British Cattle Breeders Club for asking me to give you a presentation.

Metcalfe farms is a partnership consisting of retired parents John and Thora with three sons, David, Brian and Philip, we farm 2,700 acres in the heart of Wensleydale.

Alongside a haulage and contracting businesses we have 900 pedigree Holsteins expanding to 1,300 later on this year depending on milk price.

A 200KW anaerobic digester is on site and we have 900 mules ewes crossed with Texel for fat lambs.

Today I am going to explain how technology is helping us achieve a good performance from the dairy herd, but I do think we can improve further with one or two changes in the pipeline which I will mention later.

A few KPI’S, 10,800 litre milk average, 3.85 Butterfat, 3.25 Protein, 180 Cell Count.

One third of the herd is classified very good or excellent.

The milking parlour is a good place to start, it’s a 32:32 Fast Exit that has been used for over 20 years and will soon be replaced by a 72 point rotary. The Fast Exit stall work was regarded as state of the art when we installed it, through puts of 130 cows per hour were being achieved with one person milking without much prep being carried out, this has slowed down now we do full prep. Large swingover parlours probably are as fast, this parlour is very compact though with cows standing square onto pit. 

Fifteen years ago the cows were fitted with activity monitors (pedometers) and these helped us a lot catching cows bulling that we had missed, one negative is that it’s difficult to tell when is the best time to serve the cow because data is only captured at milking time. We have had a collar system on our maiden heifers which is updated every fifteen minutes, this has worked very well for timing of insemination, and similar collars will be fitted to cows when we start in the new parlour.

Ten years ago we fitted Automatic back flush and teat dipping, after some teething problems this system has proved to be a good investment reducing mastitis and chronic high cell count cows, I would recommend it to anyone, but it must be watched carefully for faults. 

Back flush will be fitted to the new rotary but we are either going to manually dip the cows or auto spray, as the parlour is much bigger we feel going back to basics with post dip might be the best option. One of the big selling points of the large rotary is the faster through put, hopefully 400 cows per hour, this will cut cow standing time by up to two hours making a massive difference on eating and resting time for the cows which should help foot health, fertility and hopefully improve yield.

In the future robotics could be fitted to the new parlour but I think it’s too early and expensive at the moment to invest in this technology. 

On the feeding side we have run a large Keenan for many years, the Pace weigh system is an excellent way to input rations and record what is actually being fed to the cows. We have also invested in a straw grinder to get straw to a consistent length to avoid cows sorting feed which I’m sure you agree they are experts at.

We are looking at a self-propelled feeder wagon because we think it will save time and we will get a more consistent dry matter forage by direct cutting from the face instead of cut out blocks getting rained on.

Automatic scrapers were fitted in the nineties which saved time, but we have learned they are not very good for cow’s feet so as they have come to the end of their lives we have gone back to basics and scrape out with a loader three times a day.

We have been using RMS or Green bedding for two years now, we find it a great bedding material with no hock abrasions and very clean cows. The Defra recommendations are sensible and should be followed. This system is saving us 50k in bedding costs.

The Anaerobic Digester has been a success, we didn’t fund it, but for providing the site, feed stock(slurry) and running it we are saving about £150 a day in electricity and £40,000 a year in nitrogen through the improved digestate. Also it’s offsetting much of the carbon dioxide produced by the cows, but this system only works with having cows housed all the time which won’t be for everyone.

With hoof care we have had an automatic footbath for a number of years now which makes it easier to do with water and chemical being piped to it, when we get the new parlour working, a longer 3.5 metre bath has been bought so feet get more dips as the cows go through.

A lameness monitor called Step metrix was evaluated a year ago and will be fitted on the new parlour, this works by weighing the cow left or right and flagging up any subtle changes, we liked the system and found just a bit of corrective modelling was good enough to cure the slightly lame cow.

With mastitis probably the best thing we have seen results from is using a teat sealant at dry off, since we started ten years ago fewer cows have been getting infection in the dry period, for six months we have tried selective therapy only giving antibiotic tubes to cows over 180 to 200 cells, this again is working well with no increase of infection in the dry period and a big drop in antibiotic usage and money saved.

In the near future when we have more time between milking’s we are going to do farm culturing of mastitis cases to see if we can target the case with the correct treatment or even letting the case self-cure again saving antibiotic usage and money.

We have used computerised calf machines for a lot of years now finding them working well, as the herd has grown we have bought extra second hand machines for a quarter of the new price. We have learned that the best results come from keeping calves in individual pens for ten days before introducing to the machine. Also the machine needs to be kept clean with teats and pipes changed after each batch.

With breeding we are using sexed semen on most of the maiden heifers, a beef sire and embryos going onto what I think is the bottom end, all this could change because I think we will end up genomic testing all heifer calves and that will tell us which heifers are the best or worst.

About eighty percent of the semen used is from genomic sires, I believe in this technology because two heifers that we had sampled that have calved are nearly exactly the same as their profile. Some breeding advisors will tell you to use a lot of different sires to spread this risk, this is rubbish because you will lose the uniformity of your herd.

To conclude, if you’re thinking of investing in technology ask yourself could the same task be done in a more simple way by organising you or your staff better?

Who will keep an eye on it to see when it breaks down?

What will it be like in a few years’ time, will it last?

Learn from other farmers, they are the best consultants!