'Milk monitor' plan aims to help develop best practice

SCOTTISH milk producers can now benchmark the performance of their dairy herds against two new "monitor" farms which have been selected to help boost the efficiency of the industry.

Dairy farmers are being encouraged to improve performance by sharing knowledge and using the monitor farms to develop best practice.

"The aim is to improve the profitability, productivity and sustainability of dairy farming businesses and allow other dairy farmers to become actively involved by visiting their local monitor farm on a regular basis as members of a community group," Dairy Co extension officer Heather Wildman explained yesterday.

She was speaking to more than 100 dairy farmers attending the first open day at Ian and Sandy Milne's dairy farm of East Pitforthie, Brechin, Angus, which has just become a monitor farm.

The dairy farm run by Robert and William Fleming at Hillhead, Kilpatrick-Fleming, Dumfries, has also been selected and will be hosting its first meeting on Wednesday, 24 March.

Key performance indicators identified at yesterday's meeting included fertility, genetics, dry cow and heifer management, calf rearing, feed efficiency, health and welfare.

"By sharing information and experiences, the monitor farm will prompt discussion for the improvement of knowledge and skills and help farmers gain greater enjoyment and quality of life from dairying," said Wildman.

The 340-strong Holstein herd at East Pitforthie is housed in a modern complex built on a greenfield site in 2004 following the amalgamation of two herds kept on separate farms. It is achieving the impressive average of 9,622 litres of milk per cow per year.

Sandy Milne, who runs the farm with his father, Ian, is looking for his involvement as a monitor farmer to achieve a further improvement in herd performance.

"The venture will make me look harder at the business and reap the benefit of pooling ideas and suggestions from other dairy farmers," he said.

The herd enjoys a high health status and is clear of one of the main problems experienced by both dairy and beef herds, Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD).

But Sandy admitted that environmental mastitis was a problem, as a result of high somatic cell counts, and also Johne's disease. The focus in future meetings will be on action to deal with both diseases.

"Our milk still qualifies for the cell count bonus but levels have been increasing and we are not sure why," said Sandy.

Action has already been taken to tackle the Johne's problem by blood testing and the segregation of cows tested as positive. Heifer calves from cows testing positive are not retained in the herd and colostrum for feeding to calves is kept only from Johne's-free cows.