Articles

Improving your farming business…the answer could be right under your nose, but you’re too busy to see it! Our new #CleanForGrowth campaign reveals what measures must be taken to make your calf rearing business cleaner, more sustainable, and more profitable.

Attending one or two key events each year gives you a vital chance to future-proof your business. You will be exposed to new products, new technologies and new ways of thinking. Here are eight key events taking place across 2019/2020.

Sometimes a successful dairy or beef business is as much about managing people as it is your herd. That applies to your full-time staff of course. But it also applies to the specialists you bring onto your farm that you can use. Here are some tips on getting more value when you call in the experts.

Investing in a computerised feeder can improve calf performance, bringing greater control and consistency to the milk feeding period. Proven automatic machines can also significantly reduce the labour devoted to calf rearing but should not be seen as an alternative to spending time with your youngstock.

A ground-breaking farming campaign designed to raise money for a mental health charity culminated in an auction-based livestock event in Ireland.

Vitamins and minerals are required for normal metabolic processes and growth

This Technical Bulletin covers the topic Energy in Calf Milk Replacers as well as showing that increasing the fat content of milk replacer has a negligible effect on the overall metabolizable energy supplies

This technical bulletin covers all you need to know about the Brix refractometer and how to use one on farm.

To find out all you need to know on how to reduce the risk of bloat in young calves, make sure to read this technical bulletin.

This technical bulletin details the advantages of using computerised feeders as well as the benefits of housing calves in groups, also covering how calves can develop diseases and how to reduce the risks involved.

Beef and dairy producers interested in a move to computerised calf feeding, or indeed replacing ageing machines, will soon be able to apply for a further round of grant funding under the popular Countryside Productivity Small Grants scheme (CPSGS).

Hannah and Johns’ story is one piece of a remarkable dairy farm sustainability jigsaw from which the British milk production industry should draw confidence.

More than half the replacement heifer calves being reared on uk commercial dairy units could be growing too slowly to hit targets for optimal health and lifetime productivity.

Our latest technical bulletin covers all you need to know about weaning the high fed milk calf.

Calf rearers will demand better nutritional solutions over the next 10 years to meet more exacting young animal health and development requirements.

Weaning is the point when calves transfer from a liquid to solid diet. Weaning can be carried out successfully only when the rumen has developed sufficiently to support the fermentation and digestion of solid feed.

If your heifers calve between 23 and 25 months then they will go on to yield more over their first five years of life compared to older calving animals.

We all know that time is money on the farm, computerised feeding systems are an investment in your farms future succession plan.

Family dairy farmers the Kidds from Quernmore near Lancaster have spent the last 10 years future-proofing their milking enterprise in the hope of building a sustainable farming business for the next generation.

Young calves are very susceptible to low temperatures. They are on highly digestible feed and are not yet ruminating so less heat is generated by digestion.