A Summary of Nigel’s presentation at the BCBC Conference 2022 ‘The mind is a powerful tool that can be positive and helpful, as well as negative and destructive.’ Nigel Owens MBE, the world’s most capped rugby union referee spoke openly about his struggles with mental health and coming to terms with his own sexuality. Nigel was born and bred on a council estate in Mynyddcerrig in Carmarthenshir...

There is no doubt that the agricultural industry is facing a period of huge change. We’ve seen significant cost price inflation, the disruption from Covid-19, new trade agreements and the post-Brexit re-focusing of UK agricultural support. Against all this, we are also continuing to see increasing focus from consumers on where food comes from and how it is produced. This manifests itself through i...

A combination of management and genetic changes can reduce the carbon footprint of an individual UK suckler unit by up to 40% while contributing to beef production efficiencies. The UK suckler industry is under immense pressure to reduce its carbon footprint while still feeding a growing population in a financially feasible way. While the strength of the suckler industry is converting grassland u...

Meat Imaging Mobile Camera: A Robust commercial grading tool ideal for the full range of Marble Score Variation From the first time I took my carcass captures, I knew I needed to bring this technology to the United States. With the rise in popularity and demand of Above Prime meat, we were beginning to face a crisis. The Wagyu meat industry was entering a new phase, with a market yearning for the...

Background Advanced breeding technologies have revolutionised livestock food production. Genetic improvement has facilitated enormous productivity gains in farming. However, genetic potential remains a promise until genuine phenotypic progress is made. Many factors affect conception success and despite representing half of the reproductive equation, male factors can remain unmeasured or unknown. ...

I was brought up on a small, family beef farm in the parish of Harray in the Orkney Islands and from an early age I had a keen interest in cattle, especially beef cows. In 2006 my wife Lorraine and I were fortunate to be offered a farm to buy, and since then have purchased another farm and built the herd up to 100 cows. We farm 330 acres, 230 which are owned and 100 on seasonal lets. We have Simme...

Sir John Hammond was a true pioneer, without whom we may never have been able to harness the myriad technologies that we now employ within livestock breeding. If we look back to the characteristic shapes and sizes of cattle, sheep and other animals in the early 20th century, it’s clear that considerable genetic changes have occurred over time with the advent of selective breeding. Given the curren...

Better breeding can play a major role in achieving Net Zero, and new genetic indexes, introduced by AHDB in 2021, will help the process gather pace. By focussing on suitable traits in a breeding programme, it has been estimated that the dairy industry can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20% over the next 20 years, simply by selecting better genetics. This is expected to be one of the most...

After several years out in the industry, working with cows and eventually as a sire analyst for Genus for nearly two decades, I had the opportunity to come home and put what I had learnt into practice. I formulated a breeding plan looking at where we were, where we were heading and where we wanted to go. We were close to 400 cows with followers. A Holstein stock bull had historically been used b...

Key messages Novel, heritable traits that are measured earlier than current re-calving and mating traits could increase the accuracy of estimated breeding values (BV) for fertility and facilitate faster genetic gain in dairy cattle. Using a unique research herd, we demonstrated that dairy cows with elite parent average Fertility BV had earlier puberty, shorter anogenital distance (AGD), more con...

Ovum Pick Up (OPU) is a non invasive technique for recovering oocytes or egg cells from the follicles of live cows. OPU is done by needle guided, trans-vaginal ultrasound that recovers the oocytes using vacuum suction. The oocytes are washed, sorted, and graded. The oocytes are then In-Vitro fertilized, cultured, and finally frozen in individual straws. The frozen straws are returned to the dairy ...

Our family owns and operates a 2,000 Holstein cow dairy with about 3,000 replacements and beef crosses in southwest Idaho. We also farm about 3,500 acres raising corn, corn silage, alfalfa, and cereal grain forage to feed the herd. My parents bought the 100 acres that the dairy sits on in 1960 and began to milk about 40 Guernsey cows. They transitioned to Holsteins in the 1970’s, adding cows and l...

James Duke and James Lywood spoke to Karen Wonnacott during the lunchtime workshop at the BCBC Conference, where they introduced the concept of ‘intelligent venting’ to help combat the adverse effects of high vacuum levels on teat health, utilising the new ADF InVent milking system. A breath of fresh air for stress-free milking – literally! ADF Milking recently launched their new technology, InVe...