Dairy Update October 2011

Rainton Farm is the home of luxury ice cream maker Cream o’ Galloway and a popular visitor destination with strong green credentials.

However owners David and Wilma Finlay have started on a course that they believe is their most important yet – Lean Farming.

We are 18 months into a 30 month project, building a whole new modern dairy unit including an anaerobic digester.  Our main focus is to tackle the challenges of animal welfare, climate change, and energy efficiency by producing as much food as possible from grass.

For David, Lean Farming is about re-thinking the accepted norms.  So taking a leaf out of Toyota’s Lean Manufacturing book, he has re-thought the entire process so that he maximises output whilst minimising bought in resources.

The most headline grabbing part of the plan is that we will be leaving the calves to suckle their mothers for their first year until they wean naturally.  We will also be milking only once a day.  Initially even David thought the idea was mad – why feed all that milk to a calf that will hardly be worth the selling price of the milk that it drinks?  But when you work out the savings and benefits  that a much more natural system brings, especially reducing the bought in feed, increasing the productive life of the cow and the calves thriving so much better when they are suckling their mothers, then it does all make financial and environmental sense.

David is also changing the breed to be more of a mongrel so that it is more resilient.  Instead of the traditional Ayrshire, he is now breeding a 3 way cross – British Fresian, Montbeliard and Swedish Red.  As an industry we have specialised too far.  We now get milk from highly bred dairy herds and beef from suckler herds, that are bred to produce a norm that suits large abattoir and beef processors.  In the new system we will get both milk and quality beef from the same herd – just think of the reduction in methane!

We are breeding our own replacements, so the Montbeliard and British Fresian calves born in autumn 2009 will be the first cows to keep their calves, when they themselves have their first calf in autumn 2012.

Right now David and the farm staff are busy building much of the new dairy themselves. We know that not everything will go to plan when we move to the new system, but the staff are really up for it and are looking forward to the challenge.  Everyone can see the pressure on dairy farms to get bigger or to sell up.  We want to demonstrate that this is an economic and green alternative.