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Strategic Dairy Farm Launch: Lancashire
Past Event
Tuesday, 15 December 2020
7:00pm - 8:00pm
Webinar recording
Join us for the launch of our latest strategic dairy farm, Myerscough College, home to an all-year-round herd of 200 Holstein cows yielding approximately 9,500 litres.
You will get an open, honest, and transparent overview of the farm from Director of Farm Operations, Ruari Martin, including its background, operations, and a virtual tour.
We will hear from Ruari, who is a current member of British Cattle Breeders Conference committee, a previous Tesco Future Farmer and MBA graduate from York University about his long term vision for the business as well as looking at the farm’s technical performance against AHDB’s KPIs.
This will cover a critical look at areas for improvement and future focus that include:
- Improving soil structure by correcting and reducing compaction and indices
- Improving infrastructure and management to reduce cell count
- Maximising the use of data for farm management
- Maximizing grass utilisation and crop rotations
If you can’t make it to the live webinar, please still register, as it will be recorded and sent to you afterwards to watch in your own time.
For more information regarding the event please call James Hague AHDB Knowledge Exchange Manager on 07792 289386.
About Myerscough College
Lodge Farm is one of three farms which Myerscough College tenant from the Duchy of Lancaster. The farm is based next to the main college campus just North of Preston, Lancashire. The farms form neighbouring units which make up the 300ha farming business, run as one operation comprising 200 dairy cows, 1500 breeding sheep, 70 suckler cattle, 300 finishing beef and 40ha of arable. This commercial activity provides a working example of the industry for over 5,000 students in land-based courses across the North West each year.
The farm team consist of 8 full time staff and up to a further 4 casuals at busy times of year. The dairy enterprise is managed by Farm Director Ruari Martin with help from Assistant Manager Patrick Armitage and a Herdsperson whose position is currently open.
The dairy herd is managed as a 200 cow, all-year-round calving, 9,000-10,000 litre semi-intensive herd on a CO-OP liquid milk contract. Cows are milked twice a day averaging 4.2% butterfat and 3.45% protein year to September 2020. Sexed semen is used to breed the best heifer replacement with all other inseminations to beef to put through the finishing unit at Lodge. Heifers calve at 24 months with a full RMS courtesy of Genus.
Cows are housed most of the year with PD+ cattle grazed from March to September, weather permitting. PD- and fresh cows are housed all summer to maintain diet consistency and aid fertility. The farm runs a PMR with one diet for open cows and another for PD+ with cows fed to yield through out of parlour feeders. These mixes consist of predominantly grass silage, whole crop, blend and minerals. The future aim is to improve grassland productivity through reseeding to open more cropping ground for home produced forage and grain.
Staff and student engagement with the farm as well as external visitors are a big part of the business, as is commercial research and knowledge exchange events in the local community. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has hampered much of this activity, but the team are excited to welcome virtual visitors to the site.
Learn more about Myerscough College
About Strategic Dairy Farms
Strategic Dairy Farms aim to help farmers learn from each other through regular on-farm meetings where we will share key performance data and showcase what the best farmers are doing.
They form part of the Optimal Dairy Systems programme which aims to help dairy farmers reduce costs and increase efficiency by focusing on either a tight block or all-year-round calving system.
The growing network of Strategic Dairy Farms have calculated KPIs for their enterprises which are shared at meetings and published online. These are physical and financial performance measures that are critical to success. Farmers can benchmark their businesses against these KPIs to help identify areas for improvement.