It never ceases to amaze us as to how quickly time passes by and perhaps none more so than the last twenty years since the introduction of milk quotas, however in this particular passage we wish to reflect and share with you the story of the successful partnership we have developed over the last fourteen months with our customer David Humphreys of Barton Farm, Malpas.
It seems like it was yesterday when we made contact with David in September 2002 with a telephone call. It was an interesting conversation as David was full of praise for our monthly newsletter, he enjoyed the simple format and found it informative and of benefit to his business.
The next move was to go and see David and his dairy herd, to not only have an exchange of shared comment with regard to his business aspiration, but also have a look at the dairy environment and the cows. This organisation is that of a one man band managing 100 cows and followers with some managed relief milking coming to help in the operation. The whole system and success of this business has to revolve around simplicity, the herd calves down in a busy Autumn when grass is a lesser priority and the concentration is that of feeding the cows correctly in order to peak them well, post calving, maintain body condition and return them back into calf. Grass is important to this operation and full advantage is taken during the spring when an early turnout on good land enables a further flush of milk to deliver a full performance value.
To manage this operation well demands a simple daily routine and so the winter programme is to supply grass silage to the cows through a combination of self fed and trough passage, dairy nuts are then fed according to yield in the parlour.
Prior to GP Feeds arriving upon the scene, David’s concern was that the milk had dropped considerably and the milk protein percentage was also falling away, this was less than pleasing as the milk was going to a cheese manufacturer. Advice had been sought and David’s usual feed supplier thought that he should feed more compound. We thought differently and suggested that the feed rate was high enough but the raw material make up of his existing diet was not delivering sufficient fermentable energy to the cows.
We analysed David’s grass silage and convinced him that our dairy ration HE Supreme 22 would deliver an improvement in milk yield and quality as well as an economic benefit to his business. We soon achieved a response in milk yield that was to present a 20% increase in daily production and a modest increase in milk protein. An average increase of 5 litres per cow was achieved within a week of going onto our feed.
Our Supreme range of dairy feeds coupled with some sound advice has continued to deliver a significant improvement in the performance of David’s dairy herd whereby the increase in the dairy cow yield is in line with the genetic potential of the cows and has lifted the turnover value of his business to new height. We are now planning the next move forward with some additional changes to the style of feeding the cows but maintaining the theme of simplified management to make the best use of the time available to be in control of the overall operation.
David Humphreys is pleased with the partnership with GP Feeds and the people representing the company. The feeds are of good physical quality and palatable, this together with the fixed formulations of the ration deliver the performance to his herd that surpasses all that has been achieved in the past. This is another success story that we are please to share with you via our newsletter. Could your business be the next one that GP Feeds shares in the success and delivers the necessary performance value that makes good news worth reporting. We are only a telephone call away.