Page 16 - Livestock Matters - Winter 2012

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F A R M S K I L L S
Sophie Throup
FarmSkills Manager
Minimising disease and improving survival
rates in stock is one of the most effective ways
of controlling costs, reducing carbon footprint
and improving cow productivity on farm. So
when FarmSkills were asked to support the
Arla Foods Milk Partnership and Kite with the
delivery of 26 practical, business focused
FarmSkills Environmental Mastitis workshops
round the country to farmers from Penrith to
Devon, we jumped at the chance.
As Matthew Pugh from Belmont Vets, and one
of the FarmSkills trainers for this programme
says: ‘When farmers have to cull animals as
a result of mastitis and rear additional stock
to replace animals lost, they are not only
increasing their carbon footprint, but also
adding to their workload, pressure and costs.
Through delivering this series of workshops
for Arla, we hope that farmers will be able
to understand mastitis more completely, and
pick up plenty of tips and good ideas to help
improve their business.’
The workshops all run on farm from
11am - 3pm. After a brief start to understand
what attendees want to achieve from the
day, the workshop moves round the host
farm identifying key risk areas for dry cows,
milking cows and their accommodation and
in the milking parlour. Delegates are shown
how to use a CMT kit to help test for mastitis
at milking time, kindly donated by Boehringer
Ingelheim and encouraged to monitor and
measure mastitis statistics to help show where
problems lie.
Farmer Lizzie Miles from Northallerton
who attended a workshop on 19
November said:
‘I was interested to attend this workshop as
the majority of mastitis cases within our herd
are environmental. The course highlighted the
importance of recording each case in detail
in order to achieve a lowered rate of mastitis,
as analysing the time in lactation cases occur
most frequently can identify trends and offer
reasons why some periods of time contain
more mastitis than others e.g. Post-calving.
‘I enjoyed looking round the host farm as
it is always useful to see how other farms
manage their herds and how they deal with
mastitis. In the future I aim to lower mastitis
cases within our herd by recording cases
in greater detail, looking at milking cow
management to lower rates along with the
method cows are dried off and periods of
time they are dry for.’
The workshops are running for Arla
farmers from 19 November to the end
of March 2013. If you are not an Arla
farmer, but would like a workshop - or
series of workshops - organised for you,
please don't hesitate to get in touch
with us at the FarmSkills office.
WORKING
TOGETHER
FOR A HEALTHIER FUTURE...
15
LIVESTOCK MATTERS
FarmSkills on
tour!
Environmental Mastitis workshops hit the road