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Prize-winning UK herd must battle to survive the dairy crisis


The high standards and efficient productivity of an award-winning Norfolk Holstein herd have not been able to insulate its owners from the crisis in the dairy industry.

Eddie Brigham, with some of his Easthaugh herd who have won the 2015 Champion Dairy Herd prize from the Norfolk Holstein Club. Picture: DENISE BRADLEY

It’s a farm whose commitment to animal husbandry, pedigree breeding and productivity has secured the coveted title of Norfolk’s best Holstein herd.

But even these high standards of management and star performance have not protected the business from the harsh economic realities of a dairy sector in crisis.

The Norfolk Holstein Club’s 2015 senior herd competition was won by the Easthaugh Herd, near Reepham, managed by brothers Eddie and William Brigham.

Their success comes against a backdrop of uncertainty, with no immediate prospect of an end to the market conditions which have seen milk prices fall below the cost of production.

In recent weeks, discount supermarkets have reacted to high-profile protests by raising their base prices, as politicians and farming leaders struggle to find a long-term solution for the sustainability of the industry.

But they are fighting against the inexorable forces of supply and demand, as global over-supply floods world markets and drowns the commodity price for milk.

The Brighams’ farm is a part-owner of Arla, the co-operative milk processor, which currently pays them 23p a litre. The cost of production is nearer 28p, so the farm is losing about 5p for every litre it produces – about 1.7m litres annually. At that rate, the dairy is losing £85,000 a year.

The business is helped by its diversity, with a Hereford bull beefing up the sale value of calves, and a 1,000-acre arable operation spreading the financial risk and supplying home-grown maize and grass silage to keep animal feed costs low.

But Eddie Brigham said the farm would be “sunk” without those alternative revenue streams – and it still faces the difficult decision of culling older, less productive animals to ensure cost-efficient production.

“I always thought that if I work hard enough I will make a living,” he said. “But we are working just as hard and the herd is not making any money.

“What we are doing is keeping the herd younger and we are going to have to cull some cows that have a bit of age on them. It has cost us so much to rear these heifers but for some of them, the money is not in them. The herd will probably go down by 10-15 cows.

“Everyone is making these decisions but we are being driven to do that in order to survive this winter. I think it will be the worst winter in 50 years. “What needs to happen in this country is we need to lose 500,000 cows. There is just too much milk. I am just as big a culprit as anyone. I breed the best cows I can, we get more milk out of them, and down goes the price. That is the unfortunate thing.”

Mr Brigham’s brother William spent 14 years representing the dairy industry, firstly on the national milk committee, and then on the regional dairy board, until 2010.

He said: “After May 2014 the prices started coming down from 34p per litre, where we were making a reasonable profit. In fact, we were making a good profit. But it has kept falling since then.

“We are owners of Arla, we have been putting money into it for several years, but the elephant in the room as far as we are concerned is the currency. We are in all these European countries which are all tied to the euro, and we are paid in the euro equivalent, so the exchange rate does affect it. There is a mechanism for working out the exchange rate based on a three-month average, but we are still at a rate of 1.42 euros at the moment.

“Last January, we were told that the policy was to target the growth areas and they were Russia, China and Africa. We were also told that dairy had good prospects going forward in the short and medium term. How wrong could they be?

“We can only look at our costs. The major costs are feed and labour, so we can look at reducing the cost of the feed that we produce ourselves.

“We have got to batten down the hatches and hope it gets better. There is no easy answer. We are trying a lot of things that we don’t like doing. We cut down on labour, for instance. The young lad who left did so because he got wind of how things were going, so he went and got anther job.

“The supermarkets are doing their bit, but it is going to be survival of the fittest.”

Reasons for the herd’s success

The Easthaugh Herd comprises about 170 Holsteins, with 150 cows in milk at any one time.

Eddie Brigham breeds the animals using bulls from all over the world, looking for good milking capabilities and health traits such as “good legs and feet, and well stitched-on udders”.

The 73-year-old drove the farm’s conversion to dairy after taking it over with his brother in 1961, and he made the decision to change from British Friesians to Holsteins following the BSE disease crisis in the mid-1990s.

He said: “I have always wanted to milk cows, ever since I was three. They fascinate me. And then I got into the breeding and it overwhelms me how I can change a cow through breeding.

“The animals are kept in tip-top condition. They have to be, otherwise their performance will fall off the edge and you will be in trouble. They are like athletes.

“We used to call them super cows. They have lost that name now, which is a good thing, but Holsteins are extremely efficient at turning forage into milk. These cows will average 32 litres a day on a yearly basis, and some may go up to 40 or 50 litres.

“I am very proud of this cow (Easthaugh Inez 16) who has done 123,000 litres of milk in her lifetime. My greatest achievement is that I have bred 12 100-tonne cows, and do that you have to look after them properly.

“I have a vet once a fortnight to check them over, and a nutritionist every month. They are blood tested and vaccinated and we keep disease levels low. They are extremely well looked after – that is why the older cows will go for 10 or 12 years.”

Star performer

The “star cow” of the Easthaugh Herd – hailed as Norfolk’s best Holstein – is a milk-making powerhouse whose fortunate birth was the result of her owner’s frustration.

Easthaugh Audrey 90, who won the top individual prize from the Norfolk Holstein Club’s annual competition, was the product of a mating between two animals sired by the same bull, named Picston Shottle – regarded was one of the great bulls of the breed.

Breeder Eddie Brigham said: “It was a half-brother, half-sister mating. I would never have done it normally, but I did it out of sheer frustration.

“Her mother had seven calves and she was difficult to get into calf, so I said let’s put her around the corner to the bull. It worked and she produced a heifer. I don’t know whether it is sheer luck or fate.

“She has got good height at the shoulder, tremendous depth through the girth, openness of rib, and this super udder. You might get one like that every 600 matings. She has done 9,263kgs in 183 days and she is still doing 47kg a day.

“She is probably the best young cow I have ever bred. It will be a long while before I get another one like her. She has got the looks and the performance – all she has got to do now is keep producing it.”

Source: Dereham Times

 


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