When: December 5th 2018 10:45 to 14:30
Location: SN15 4LS
Join us at the launch of our latest strategic dairy farm run by Joe and Irving Carter who will provide an open, honest and transparent view of their business.
Strategic farms encourage ‘farmer to farmer’ learning by hosting regular on-farm meetings and openly sharing their figures against our key performance indicators.
The launch meeting will give you a comprehensive overview of the farm, including:
- Background to the farm including a farm tour
- Current technical performance against AHDB’s KPIs for AYR calving herds
- Current financial Performance against AHDB ‘s KPIs
- How representatives including; Andy Dodds (Farm Consultancy Group), Andy Rose from Garden Vets, Roy Eastlake (Biotal Lallemand) and James Poole (Alta Genetics) contribute to current performance
- Long term vision for the farm, including a critical look at current under-performance and areas for improvement and future focus
If you’re interested in benchmarking and want to find out more about a high performing AYR farm, then this meeting is for you.
Date: Wednesday 5th December 2018
Time: 10:45 prompt – 14:30 (lunch provided so booking essential)
Venue: Carpenters Farm, Avon, Chippenham, Wiltshire SN15 4LS (by kind permission of the Carter family)
To book your FREE place click here or contact the AHDB KE Events Hub on 01904 771216 or [email protected] or for more information contact Steve West on 07816 159574.
The cost of attending this event is covered through your levy but please ensure you register your attendance for catering purposes. If you have any special dietary requirement please contact us as soon as possible
Please bring a clean pair of wellington boots to help with the biosecurity and out of respect to the host’s farm business.
Dairy Pro Points are available for attending this event, Click here for more details.
About Strategic Dairy Farms
Strategic dairy farms 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 lower costs and increase efficiency by focusing on either a block or all year round calving system.
The growing network of strategic dairy farms have calculated key performance indicators (KPI’s) 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 KPI’s and identify areas for improvement.
About The Farm
Carpenters farm is managed by Joe Carter in partnership with his parents. The farm’s herd is made up of 290 Holsteins who are fully housed and milked twice a day, producing just over 11,000 litres on average. The land extends to 330 acres split between grass and maize.
Speaking about why he wanted to get involved with the programme, Joe said: “I’m keen to get involved with the strategic farm project to learn from farms who run similar systems as well as showcasing what we do here.”
The health, welfare and comfort of his cows is paramount for Joe and he believes this contributes to their good performance and longevity as he explains:
“We avoid hard transitions between cow groups to avoid dominant behaviour causing stress and subsequent milk drop. There is a heifer and subordinate cow group which is housed separately from the rest of the herd.”
“Cow Signals have helped us maximise the effectiveness of our older buildings and transition cows are kept in groups limited to a maximum of 12 with the whole group being integrated into the main herd at the appropriate time.”
Joe scores well against AHDB’s key performance indicators for all year round calvers, achieving good levels of fertility with a pregnancy rate of 23% and heifers calve at 23.5 months of age.
Over the next three to five years Joe aims to increase cow and heifer numbers along with genetics to improve cow welfare and efficiency further still.
Follow the programme at www.dairy.ahdb.org.uk/ strategic-dairy-farm
