Your dairy levy at work: Animal health, genetics and the environment

Your levy funds regular activity to inform breeding decisions, improve animal health and reduce your environmental impact.

Dairy genetics

We invest over £500,000 every year on genetic and genomics, which includes evaluations of over 1 million live cows each year and delivers:

• Data used by over 95% of dairy semen sold in GB through our genetic and genomic evaluations for bulls
• The development of new indexes like Feed Advantage and EnviroCow to help breed more economic and environmentally friendly cow

Technical programmes and research

The Dairy Research Partnership - targets long-term, applied research and development activities working with the University of Nottingham, Harper Adams University, Royal Veterinary College and SRUC. Every pound of levy invested in this partnership returns £9.40 on farm improvements.

Healthy Feet Programme - saves a typical herd £9,325 per year and is delivered by 180 trained Mobility Mentors (vets, consultants and hoof trimmers) who workwith farmers to reduce lameness on farm.

Mastitis Control Plan - over 400 people have been trained to deliver the plan with levy payers

• Between 2009 and 2016 1,366 control plans were carried out across 1,044 farms covering 219,354 cows
• Around 31,000 cows benefit from the plan each year, giving an estimated industy benefit of £1.5 million annually

BVDFree - 2,560 dairy holdings in England covering 531,574 breeding cows are members of BVDFree. The scheme helps levy payers protect almost £40 million in savings every year.

Recommended Grass and Clover list - 69% of levy payers said it was a critical source of information in their grass and clover selection process