“Describe how a commercial suckler unit could introduce beef shorthorn to its current model in order todevelop a sustainable and profitable enterprise without support payments post Brexit. Illustrate your response where applicable with data in chart or table format. Utilize information from lecture notes and the AHDB Beef and Lamb and NBA websites”. Award winning presentation Beef production in t...

Summary Many farms worldwide suffer from cryptosporidiosis in their neonatal calves. With some farms reporting up to 30% of calf losses attributed to the parasite. During my PhD, I have researched potential transmission routes of the parasite to calves along with determining the effect infection could have long-term on calf growth. In this article, the best control measures and best disinfectants...

Introduction Over decades, beef breeders and producers have become very proficient at exploiting all management and husbandry resources available to them to maintain and grow their enterprise margins. For many, in comparison with past times, the degree of knowledge, skill, technology and precision deployed to manage successful enterprises has never been greater. However, across all breeds, our m...

AHDB Stocktake data shows the top third of beef producers just about breaking even and average producers losing around £150 per cow per year. With the prospect of the beef industry having to compete with potentially cheaper and higher quality imports, or increase production to become self-sufficient after Brexit, it’s time to think hard and scrutinise our breeding programmes if we, in the UK, are ...

Succession will happen whether we want it to or not, we will all have our ‘last fence post’ there is an end, and most will hope to reflect that they have had a good life farming handing their legacy onto the next generation in a better state than they had inherited it. Life, can be tricky it can be difficult but to have a life and career where you feel pride, passion, purpose and enjoyment each d...

Starting from scratch Bekka and I are first generation farmers. After my mid-life crisis at 22, I knew only that I wanted to be involved with the land. At first, this romantic notion led me to wonder whether I’d like to spend my life teaching kids to climb or volunteers to fix footpaths: farming seemed like a job for a farmer’s son. With a reputation for being determined to the point of stubbornn...

I am 29 years old and I live in North Wales on the Llyn Peninsular with my Fiancée, Mari Jones and our 3 children, Seren 7, Sionyn 4 and Steffan 1. I am a first generation farmer and grew up in the city of Manchester (England). From an early age my mother and father took me and my brothers to North Wales on camping holidays where I discovered my passion for agriculture. I didn’t enjoy school and...

VikingGenetics is a worldwide Artificial Insemination (AI) company owned by 25,000 beef and dairy farmers in Denmark, Sweden and Finland and a leader in providing genetics to improve cattle breeding with healthy, fertile and high producing cows. The unique Nordic registration system is the cornerstone of our breeding aims, making it possible to breed for healthy cows, which has proven to be the be...

Myself, Judith and son Tom run a 120 cow herd of pedigree Holstein cows at Curlew Fields Farm near York. We developed the current green field site in 2003, moving in 2004 after our landlord expressed a desire to develop Laburnum Farm, our old tenanted farm for housing. This was a fantastic opportunity for us as space was severely limited in the village farmyard and most of the neighbouring farmyar...

Overview Manipulation of genomes is hardly new. Processes directly aimed at genetic modification were first developed in the 1970s and less directly we have been altering genomes for millennia through selective breeding. Recent technologies, most notably CRISPRCas9, nonetheless mark something new, the possibility of precisely specified and targeted changes to genome sequence. These advances have ...

The field of mammalian genome engineering took a huge step forward with the birth of dolly the sheep and the advent of cloning technology 22 years ago. At the time it was hoped that cloning would provide us with the ability to introduce precise insertions or deletions easily and efficiently into the germline of livestock species. Unfortunately, as it turns out, cloning is not as easy nor as effici...