Teeswater dairy farmers score top spot
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
by SUSAN MANN
Teeswater-area dairy farmers Mark and Josh Ireland are the 2012 top herd managers for the entire Ontario and Western Canadian regions served by CanWest DHI.
Mark and his son, Josh, of Albadon Farms Ltd. also received first for CanWest DHI’s Herd Management Score Award in Ontario. Second was Summitholm Holsteins operated by Carl, Dave and Ben Loewith of Lynden, while Armstrong Manor was third. It’s operated by David and Philip Armstrong of Caledon.
CanWest DHI named the top three herd managers in each of Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia on Wednesday.
Mark and Josh, who milk 160 to 170 cows, achieved a score of 998 out of a possible 1,000. “It really wasn’t a surprise to us that at 998 we were the highest one for all of the rest of Canada,” Mark Ireland says.
As part of the CanWest DHI herd management score award, points are assigned for performance in six different management areas. They are: milk value, udder health, age at first calving, calving interval, longevity and herd efficiency.
Every year, farmers who are part of CanWest DHI’s herd management program receive a score. “It’s not a competition,” Ireland says. “It’s not designed to be a competition. It’s designed to be a herd management tool.”
CanWest DHI says in its press release the score is an excellent barometer of overall herd performance. It’s a great tool for monitoring progress from year to year and also allows herds to benchmark themselves against others.
Ireland agrees. The number two herd, Summitholm Holsteins, has been number one for the past nine years out of 10, he says, adding “in my mind, they are the best dairymen in Ontario.”
He says he has visited Summitholm Holsteins to find out what they’re doing well and how Albadon Farms can try to do better itself. “It’s all about trying to manage a better dairy farm.”
Ireland says getting scores in the six different management areas helps farmers focus on where they need to do better. One thing they’ve emphasized at Albadon Farms is cow comfort. They built a new free stall barn with sand bedding in 2009. The cows like to lie in the sand “so it’s like the cows are at the beach every day,” he notes.
They saw an improvement in hoof health, an increase in general cow health and cow bruising disappeared because of the sand bedding and their bigger barn with higher ceilings. BF