Nuffield #22 Cow Calf Contact on a Victorian Dairy Farm

When you get going with Nuffield travel you’ll be told to leave time for “chance meetings”- for farms you get referred to or taken to while you’re travelling. I did a bit of that in Chile, but most of my itineraries so far have been pre-booked and packed in, as a result of short travel times, coronavirus tracking on my early trips, and visiting countries where they don’t have a Nuffield community or a culture of random farm visits due to stricter biosecurity principles than we see in the UK.

However, now that I’m in Australia, where there are lots of Nuffield Scholars and I am travelling for longer, I have put some time aside for those visits. And how glad I was when my first farm visit gave me the number of a local cow calf contact herd, and not only that but a herd that has been practicing some form of CCC for a decade and sells milk to a non branded processor.

Background

The farm has been in the family since the 1970s, and the couple are both from dairy farming backgrounds with the farm being where he grew up. They converted to organic some time ago as it aligned with their beliefs on how farms should be managed, and have worked hard to promote biodiversity on the farm. They have undertaken tree planting and are also adding in trees that can be foraged by cows, and are in the process of fencing off all dams to improve water quality for the farm’s many frogs.

Anzac and Smudge investigating native shrubs

They told me throughout that what they do is a continually evolving process as they carry out trials, make changes, and keep pushing for a business that meets their ethical, welfare, and environmental standards.

Getting in to CCC

The transition to CCC started around ten years ago and was driven by a reluctance to separate cows and calves. Over the years they experimented with small batches of calves, finding out what worked and what didn’t before taking the plunge to go completely CCC three years ago. Much of what is done on the farm is focussed on a good lifestyle and not overworking, therefore branding, processing, and selling their own milk wasn’t something they looked at.

Interestingly many members of their discussion group had either tried CCC and stopped, or practice it on a smaller scale e.g. the last few weeks of cows in their block rear their own calves.

Breeding

The cows are a mixture of Friesian, Jersey, Ayrshire cows which is fairly typical of herds in the area. Until very recently Australian organic farms were not allowed to use sexed semen therefore they had been using solely dairy semen. A while back they decided to rear all their bull calves through to finishing and so destocked the dairy herd to give them the space needed. The calves born this spring and due to be born this autumn are half Fleckvieh which was chosen to enhance the dairy beef aspect. The calves saw were massive and looked very well. Now that they can use sexed semen they are integrating that into their strategy. At the moment the dairy herd is down on numbers- 60 milking- and they don’t have enough heifer replacements coming through so they will use lots of sexed semen before they start to use some beef.

Having plenty of heifers coming through will allow them to selectively cull older cows and also make future breeding decisions based on traits that fit both their solids milk contract and their CCC system, for example breeding replacements from cows that have good milk let down and easy temperaments, and crossing back to Jersey to retain milk solids while benefitting from the carcase quality of the Fleckvieh.

The cows calve once every 18 months, a practice they have had in place for 20 years. This was implemented to make life less stressful for cows and people, and has had the impact of increasing milk yield. Heat detection is done with Kamars and they do their own AI. Because there will be open cows who are not supposed to be served and they don’t run a split herd they can’t use a sweeper bull.

Having the CCC system has stressed to them the importance of a tight block, with the aim of each one being 6-8 weeks long. This is because they’ve found that calves born at the start of the block will drink milk from cows with younger calves (because they can push those calves out of the way) and impede their development.

Recently the dairy beef enterprise has evolved through working with a mobile abattoir. The abattoir has only recently been legal and needs around 25 animals to process at one time. The bull calves are finished at two years old and with the six month calving blocks and tight calving pattern it will be easy to batch them up. However, to make the 25 they will also need to plan ahead with cull cows to make sure that they are ready to go at the same time.

Milking

Cows and calves enter the herd immediately after calving, although they are sometimes held back from the main herd if there is a long walking distance. They have found that sometimes calves will choose to stay near the dairy and not walk to pasture.

The farm initially milked twice a day, but a power cut last year forced them to milk later one day, and after looking at their costs and income they decided to switch to a 3 in 2 system. They had previously worked out that they couldn’t bring cows in for milking in the dark, because the cows got dangerous when they couldn’t see that calves were coming with them. The milking times are currently 6am and 6pm on the first day and midday on the second.

The 3 in 2 milking is still a relatively new concept but it has reduced labour demand and also reduces electricity use and stress on cows. With the extended lactations they don’t think once a day milking would be suitable as cows would probably dry themselves off early.

From about a month old the cows are separated from the cows for some blocks between milking. This is done to stop the calves gorging on milk, because not only do they strip the cows of milk before milking but they also wander off and get up to more trouble if they are very full of milk.

During milking the calves wait in the collecting yard- having destocked the yard has a lot of space- and when separated they have their own kindergarten area where they graze and can be fed supplementary hay and licks if needed.

The cows aren’t fed any grain- although they are open to feeding it if needed- so the business escapes the main added cost of organic dairying which is feed. This is one factor that means they can be viable on a conventional contract, although the organic milk price is not far ahead of the conventional at the moment.

They haven’t noticed any real increases in somatic cell count since going to CCC, although their bulk count has been higher this year than they’d like as a result of keeping older cows in the herd to maintain numbers and time culling to suit the mobile abattoir. Four years ago (when they would have had a CCC enterprise but not the whole herd) they won their then milk buyer’s milk quality award, therefore this is something they are very invested in keeping to a high standard.

Due to the long withdrawal time and compulsory isolation of antibiotic treated cows they use minimal antibiotics and only treat when its absolutely necessary. Drying off is done simply by stopping milking, they aim for a six week minimum dry period and will dry cows off earlier if needed.

Weaning

Weaning is the one of biggest challenges on CCC farms and here they do see some checks in daily liveweight gain on weaning, although the calves are very big. Total weaning is usually done by 5-6 months and is built up by increasing the between milking times where cows and calves are separated. By the end the calves are very much grazing. Autumn calves have a harder time for weaning than the spring calves- possibly due to reduced quality grass?

Thoughts

This was a really great farm to visit, as they are balancing CCC with a standard contract (and are also losing an organic premium by selling conventionally!), block calving, and grazing. It is a high welfare and ethical farm but also pragmatic around issues such as culling older cows, making breeding decisions based on desirable traits, and producing milk that fits their contract.

Through my whole visit they spoke of things they were refining and improving- getting on top of grass allocation, incorporating mixed species swards, perfecting finishing the cull cows, improving water quality for wildlife, investigating forage tree species.

When I asked what their biggest challenge was they said it was letting go of pre-conceived ideas, something I wouldn’t associate with them as they have made so many changes and are so open to new ideas. They select bulls on A2:A2 genetics as they want to breed cows that produce healthier milk; they are not rewarded for this, but its a personal objective which may be beneficial in the future.

Their second biggest challenge, interestingly, was managing their four dogs around a CCC system. Where cows have calves on them they become more wary of dogs and can be dangerous if a person is between them and the dog. While I was there the calves kept coming up to see the dogs and the cows were unbothered by it, presumably because the calves were very big and so the dogs weren’t seen as a threat.

I was really impressed with what they were doing and how they were implementing it. There are few pasture based CCC farms that practice dam rearing AND sell milk on a standard milk price without a premium. Doing this system without any financial reward or support from research or other farmers takes courage and shows that they’re doing it for all the right reasons- and that it can work financially without the prop of selling a premium added value product. The farm was also really nice to look at with the habitat areas and variety of trees and shrubs, and their attitude to work-life balance was inspirational. Most farmers could learn a thing or two here!