A Showcase Guest's Perspective: Positive Impressions from the USA

By far the most daunting part of winning the Gold Cup, for me at least, has been coming up with the first line to write in this British Dairying article. Seeing as I couldn't come up with anything clever or original to say I thought I would just write that down, otherwise I will never make a start!

It has been a pleasure for us all to read Michael and Chris King's articles over the last 12 months and it was great to meet them at the Dairy Event in September which now seems an age ago. I would like to thank them for their kind words about us and wish them every success with their new dairy unit and expansion plans.

All of us here have enjoyed reading about the great results and also the challenges faced by all the recent winners of the Gold Cup. I hope I can bring some of the same honest observations and comment from our prospective for the next 12 months.

I would also like to thank everyone who has been involved with our business over the past few years. We are very lucky to have some great friends in the industry, fellow dairy farmers, suppliers, customers, retailers and professionals alike, all have been a great support and instrumental to our achievements. In particular thanks are due to our truly dedicated team of staff, all of whom work as hard and conscientiously as family members.

My brother Charlie and I had the opportunity to go on a tour of some big dairy units in New York state last month with 30 or so other farmers from around the UK. It was part of the Alta "Showcase Tour" which had in total 300 farmers from 27 countries. As a company Alta have decided to put all their resources, previously spent on marketing in the press and at shows, into showcasing their genetics at work in large commercial environments, which I think is to be commended.

Tom King

There was not too much hard sell, just a "Performance Pen" of best animals pulled out from the main herd and "scrubbed up" at each dairy, which really spoke for itself. The organisation was also simply brilliant, knowing how difficult it is to get two or three farmers in a car, on time, to any club meeting—the challenge of 300 and communication in several different languages must be immense.

The standard of cattle in general was also very good. All the units had a genetic plan for the type of cow they wanted and with the help of computer mating programmes were building their own genetic indexes, to suit their systems. Most were selecting on a weighting of around 70% Production and 30% Herd life/Health traits. What was most striking to me was the consistency and uniformity in the conformation of their cattle and how consistently sticking to their genetic goals was achieving great results.

The standard of farm management on display was excellent and pretty thought provoking too. We saw eight different units varying in size from 900 to 3,300 cows and all of them were selling in excess of 11,500 litres of milk per cow. The best of them were consistently selling 40 or more litres per cow per day and maintaining really good standards of fertility, which on any scale is incredible management.

Since my last trip to the US six years ago the mood in the dairying market place has changed quite a lot too it seems. Several of the farmers were talking about dairy farming coming under more pressure from welfare and environmental groups. They are also having to comply with more stringent regulations on slurry storage and management, similar to NVZs here. Planning for big dairy units was becoming more controversial and scrutiny of visas etc. for foreign labourers becoming tougher. So in some ways they are becoming more comparable to us here in the UK.

However, all the herds we visited were using BST routinely. Most were feeding blood meal and all were stocking main milking groups at 125% plus. Culling rates are also very high, at 30%- 35% in most herds. So none of them would be qualifying for a UK supermarket contract!

What struck me so much last time I went to the US and this time as well, is just how business minded their dairy farmers are. All but one of the units we visited were family run farms that 20 years ago had less than 400 cows. All had expanded herds and grown their businesses at eye-watering rates through good times and bad by being completely focused on efficient milk production and taking opportunities to re-invest when they could. 

Interestingly the smallest unit we saw was the only one not family run. It was also probably the most interesting business wise. The business had four separate units totalling 2,800 cows and we visited the second smallest which had around 900 cows.

There were four main business partners, one of which ran this particular unit having been a herd manager for another farmer for 10 years. He had brought 200 cows and some capital with him and bought into the business partnership. Their business plan was to buy "small" 200- to 300-cow dairy units with under used milking parlours, build more cow accommodation and work them to their full potential.

This particular unit was a former research centre and had a 20 year old 18:18 milking parlour that was now milking around 750 cows three times a day. The manager was delighted to tell us it was by far the newest parlour they had on the four farms too! Their view was the return on investment on the right older units re-vamped was far greater than on building a new large-scale, one site unit with its "perceived" efficiencies—certainly food for thought.

What is often overlooked on these sort of trips though is the value in the network of new people you meet and ideas you can exchange. We made some great new friends who all had interesting stories to tell and were also just great fun to travel with. The contingent from west Wales especially deserve a mention, their socialising skills were of course second to none! They were also all keen Holstein enthusiasts and for them the performance pens were a paradise found.

Article posted with permission from British Dairying magazine, November 2011

To learn more about the RABDF Gold Cup award, see the following link: http://www.rabdf.co.uk/awards/gold-cup