Rory’s radical route to changing dairy industry
A radical project aimed at improving the performance of the dairy cow and making the dairy farmer more resilient to fluctuations in prices and policies is under way in the south west of Scotland.
Speaking yesterday in Dundee, Rory Christie of Dourie Farming Company of Newton Stewart, said that the project was based on improving the very variable production of milk solids by using only the best performing cows in the herd.
“If cow A produces more than cow B in the same system, the difference is likely to be genetics,” he said. “We have reams of herd data and a basic ranking system, and the difference between the best and worst cows is enormous.
“If we had a herd of the best cows, our worries would be over. Through the new rural innovation support service (RISS), a new breeding programme can be created that will target not just the bull genetics, but the dam genetics too which in turn will lead to trialling the best reproductive technologies.”
He admitted it was not a new idea, breeders having done so for years. The difference in this project, which also involves the dairy herds of Graham Armstrong of Kirvennie
Farm and Charlie Russell of Glenapp Estate, is that they will be using data supplied by world renowned dairy geneticist Mike Coffey from SRUC and this will hopefully bring results more quickly than has traditionally been the case.
After pointing out that much of the research work carried out in the dairy industry is done by commercial companies who stand to gain financially from it, Christie praised Scotland’s co-operative umbrella organisation SAOS for pulling the project together and RISS for their backing.
Christie, who was speaking at the Future Farming Scotland conference organised by the Soil Association, said that in his 1,300 strong herd the average production was 280 kilos of milk solids per year but the top 10 per cent of the herd produced almost double that amount at 470 kilos per annum. He added that every extra 50 kilos on milk solids per cow was worth £175 and this, multiplied up, equated to almost an additional quarter of a million pounds from his herd.
“We are looking to identify cows in my system that can thrive on no bought in feed, that have good fertility, longevity, health and that they are good yielders,” he added.
He explained how in recent years he had introduced ways of cutting costs in his milk production by only milking cows once per day on a grass-fed diet.
“Previously, we milked twice per day but both the staff and the milking parlour were working too long hours.”
But despite these costcutting efforts, he said the problems of thin or non-existent margins remained. “We are not consistently creating enough profits to service debt, or invest in property improvements, or to be in a position to buy our rented land, or cope with the challenges of volatile markets.”
There was also the likely removal of CAP support
Faced with this situation, Christie and his colleagues decided they were not going to “wait about for the market to save us or for some government handout to come along”.