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MI LK ING RECORDS
At North Farm near Swindon, Nick
Clarke and his wife Jo and son Sam
signed their 100-cow dairy herd up to
the DEW Club about 18 months ago.
Significant improvements to herd performance
have already been seen and their vet, Kate
Brodie is keen to progress more.
The Clarke family’s ethos is very much to
enjoy everything they do - which includes
keeping some of the family lines in their
pedigree herd going, showing cattle at local
events, and not pushing cows ‘too hard’.
Cows are calved down all year round, and
the average yield is 7,000 litres/cow from
a maize and grass-based ration, with
concentrate fed to yield in the parlour. Cases
of metabolic disorders are few.
For the past four years, Nick has been using
sexed semen. He explains: ‘There are certain
family lines we are keen to continue and so
most heifers will be put to sexed semen to
ensure we get at least one heifer replacement
from them.’
However the practice of running a bull with
the cows, not establishing whether cows were
pregnant until six months post-calving, plus
giving ‘favourite’ cows plenty of chances to
conceive, has meant their calving index had
extended to a long 439 days.
Prior to signing up to the DEW Club, the
Clarkes only used to see their vet, Kate Brodie
of Drove Veterinary Hospital for TB testing or
fire-brigade work’. But now, Kate makes a
monthly visit to carry out fertility checks and
also discuss and improve other aspects of
herd health.
Kate explains: ‘Previously cows were only
PDed at drying off, but now I’m examining
them at 42 days post-calving and we can
rectify any fertility problems straight away.
With these regular visits, we can improve
the proportion of cows served after 80 days
and cows pregnant by 100 days. Whilst
performance for these KPIs has yet to reach
target, already improvements are being seen.’
See Figure 1.
Improving performance
17 Sept 2013
Figure 1:
Improvements in KPIs seen after just 9 months at North Farm
10 June 2014
Target +/- Range
% cows served 80
days after calving
38
43
63 +/- 27
% cows pregnant 100
days after calving
27
32
35 +/- 18
Calving to 1st service
interval (days)
117
98
80 +/- 36
Calving interval (days)
434
423
404 +/- 32
% cows eligible for
service served
21
30
43 +/- 22
Milk/cow/year (kg)
5,750
6,653
9,026 +/- 1,869
Average SCC (‘000
cells/ml)
240
228
162 +/- 77
% SCC greater than
200,000 cells/ml
24
22
18 +/- 9
% SCC greater than
500,000 cells/ml
8
9
7 +/- 4
Clinical mastitis:
cases/100cows/year
0*
23
16 +/- 38
* not recorded
The Clarke Family, Left, Jo, centre, Nick, right is son Sam
Hereford sweeper bull
WORKING
TOGETHER
FOR A HEALTHIER FUTURE...
9
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