Dairy industry fails to publicise new ventures and initiatives

Overall it’s not too bad though, with the odd sunny day and I am reliably informed that there is now snow on the Welsh hills.

In Australia, South East Victoria, the wet spring has meant that for the second month in a row milk production has been below last year, having been affected by the cool wet weather.

*We are still grappling with an avalanche in the maize silage pit, where many tonnes have moved towards us, causing a ravine behind. Its quite disconcerting when you walk past to see that it has moved towards you a few inches since you last looked.

Luckily we have a hungry bio-digester which assists in getting a problem such as this one sorted more quickly.

It could be caused by the wet fourth cut silage I had ensiled beneath the maize on one side only. Being a bit wet and slippery, it did not take kindly to umpteen tonnes of maize being ensiled on top, although it has compressed it rather well and sealed it beautifully.

I have had it analysed, and it is rather good; so good in fact that the methane level in the bio-digester has edged up to higher levels than we have had before. We are now including some of this leafy silage in the cow’s ration too.

n We have been busy sorting cows for sale, putting the best ones in separate buildings which we will keep, and the ones for sale in different sheds.

This will make it easier to fine tune the selection, ensuring that we do not sell any animal we wish to keep.

It’s amazing how good the very best of our cow’s look, once they have been grouped together, and the ones for sale don’t look bad either. It’s quite a sad day really when one sells some of the cows, but they will go to good homes and will produce well for their new buyer I’m sure.

I must say, that now the decisions are behind us and the cows booked for sale, Adrian and I are very keen to see the day when we can settle down to concentrate on the work and the cows again after all the disruption.

Talk of disruption, we have been concreting the yard, which turned out to be a far bigger job than we thought (as always); twice we had to ask the milk tanker not to come, and once to reverse in, which did not go down at all well.

We are also very busy putting concrete pads down for a corn cracker and various bits of kit on the bio-digester site. Concreting is easy in this weather, nice and cool to work, and no frost to harm the fresh concrete.

We order a strong mix these days, and you need to move quite quickly to get it all sorted before it goes off. Concreting on the clay is always a challenge, as in the wet the clay comes up through the hardcore, and then in long dry spells, the clay shrinks away from the concrete underneath and cracks.

Heavy lorries then push down on the concrete and hairline cracks appear due to the lack of support underneath. Our answer to this is to put down re-enforce steel mesh, and pour the concrete very heavily, which means around ten inches in thickness; all rather expensive, but it lasts. Which is more than I can say about our farm drive. Time and time again we fill the pot-holes and heavy rain and traffic, especially heavy lorries destroy our work.

n Nocton Dairies, have re-submitted their plans for a large scale dairy unit in Lincolnshire, bowing to public pressure, by scaling down and changing the concept, by ‘greening’ the application.

What does this tell us? Why would half the number of cows make any difference to animal welfare? At what point would the welfare groups agree that this is going to be a good place for cows?

The Farm Animal Welfare Council, which advises Government on welfare, commented that the welfare of the dairy cow could be equally good in all the various systems involved in dairy farming, and that scale was a red herring; what mattered was the level of stockmanship and facilities.

You could argue that the greater the level of specialisation the better, and with scale comes a full time vet; surely a real plus for the welfarists?

What does this tell us about our PR as an industry? How good are we at connecting and communicating with the general public? If we judge our success by Nocton standards; not very good at all.

Whether its large scale dairying, GM or Cloning; all these new technologies have merit, but our efforts at explaining that has been poor to say the least.

Maybe we have little chance against the might of the media with their scary headlines, and the single issue groups, who are vociferous in their opposition.

I did not see a single headline where ‘high welfare – low carbon’ dairy was attributed to Nocton, neither did I see any good news such as ‘British farmers invest in the future’, or praise for individuals who had the confidence to invest millions in British Dairying as others leave in large numbers.

Retailers have kept their distance, with only Morrison’s taking the stance that they would wait and see. They clearly do not see it as part of their job to get involved in such difficult issues.

Where will this all end up? I have no idea if Nocton will get built on this smaller scale, or that it will be viable now the plans have changed.

If it is built, then after the dust settles and the planned visitor centre is open for all to go and see for themselves, then I expect the other half to be built.

Should that happen; will everyone look back and wonder what all the fuss was about? Would the next Nocton (if there is one) fare any better?

Where does this leave the government’s ‘localism’ agenda? Is anyone going to be in favour of development or expansion in their back yard? Where does that leave us as a country attempting to feed the people and compete in the world?