Last week (5 Aug) we held our first live event in 18 months- the long-awaited 2019 Gold Cup Open Day at Bryce and Robert Sloan’s farm in Ayrshire.
It was a spectacular day with 1,000 visitors browsing the 50+ trade stands and of course, the award-winning farm. There were also speaker stations covering a range of topics from calf management to the use of robots.
Given the amount of folk who stood watching the Lely Juno and the robotic milkers and by the buzz surrounding the Lely stand, I think it is safe to say people’s heads were turned when they saw the robots in action.
The Sloan’s are a great advocate for the industry, having a fantastic ethos that puts family at the heart of what they do. They have embraced robot technology to free up time so labour can be used elsewhere, which is probably why they have outstanding production, attributed to the attention to detail they apply.
It is easy to look at farms like Darnlaw and to think ‘that is not within my reach’. However, maximising production does not necessarily mean spending big bucks, it comes down to the fine detail.
It was interesting to hear a talk from Ed Hewitt at Armour Vets who explained the importance of hitting growth rate targets of between 0.7-0.9kg a day to get heifers calving down at 24 months old. As farm subsidies are phased out, it is important to focus on these finer details that could mean make or break for some farming businesses.
The statistic from the day that sticks in my mind – a heifer calving down at 22 months old will produce 7,200 l more milk by the time she is 30 months than one calving down at 30 months who will have yielded nothing. Rearing costs also vary from £1156 at 22 months to over £1500 at 30 months old. It is not necessarily technology or new equipment that will help you achieve those goals, but rather attention to detail when it comes to health, feeding and housing, for example.
On-farm events are a great investment in time not only to see how others are doing things but to share ideas, speak to experts as well as socialising with like-minded peers. We could not hold such events without our sponsors, which included our principal sponsor Lely, Gold Cup Award Sponsor NMR and headline sponsors Kite Consulting, Advance Sourcing and Volac. We would also like to thank Graham’s Family Dairy for keeping visitors stocked up on their delicious yogurt, milk and ice cream.
Covid- 19 allowing, we will be bringing you more live events in the not-too-distant future with our next event being Women in Dairy next month (online), Business and Policy Conference (online) in November and Entrepreneurs in Dairy (face-face and online) in November. Plans for Dairy-Tech 2022 are also going great guns with the stand space almost fully booked.
You can keep up to date with all the latest event news at https://www.rabdf.co.uk/forthcoming-events. For a full report from the Gold Cup event see https://www.rabdf.co.uk/latest-news/2021/8/10/sloan-family-welcomed-large-crowd-at-long-awaited-gold-cup-open-day