FULLY BOOKED - Leicestershire: Autumn block calving fertility review

Join us to learn how reviewing and improving herd fertility performance can reduce the calving block and improve your lifestyle and profit.

Autumn calver George Wade will share how regular benchmarking has highlighted improvements and his ambitions to halve his calving block to just six weeks.

He’ll explain why concentrating workloads at the start of the season will enable them to shut down the parlour and enjoy an easier routine at the end.

You’ll also hear from dairy vet, Dave Gilbert of Dairy Insight who has worked with George, to benchmark the herd and review fertility performance to put in place a comprehensive plan for the coming season.

At this event, we’ll cover:

• A review of fertility performance for the past 4 seasons – what’s going well and what needs tweaking
• Key areas to focus on for mating this autumn 2022
• How reducing the block to 6 or 9 weeks might work at Honeypot Farm
• Dry cow diets and whether standing hay works
• Getting heifers to bulling weight to front-end load the block

For more information regarding the event please call Knowledge Exchange Manager, Shirley Macmillan: 07766 402393

About Honeypot Farm

A herd of 380 Holstein Friesians yielding 8,000 litres (of which 5,000 litres come from forage) as well as 200 replacement heifers reared at home. There are 190 ha of ring-fenced grassland, plus a further 249 ha of rented land growing all forage and supplying youngstock grazing for both farms.

About Strategic Dairy Farms

Strategic dairy farms aim to 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 reduce costs and increase efficiency by focusing on either a tight block or all-year-round calving system.

The growing network of strategic dairy farms have calculated KPIs 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 KPIs to help identify areas for improvement.