The opportunity to buy your farm after being a tenant for 65 years does not come round very often. Bob and Betty Mitchell, of Drumdreel at Strathmiglo, Fife, jumped at the chance in 2009.
Investing heavily in improvements to the steading has allowed the family to expand the dairy enterprise.
Bob and Betty have three daughters and a son. The farming partnership now consists of Bob, Betty, daughter Margo and her husband, William Webster.
Margo is largely responsible for management of the 250 Holstein Friesian cows.
More than 70 members of the East of Scotland Grassland Society recently visited the farm and saw the new cubicle house and parlour set-up which was completed in August 2012.
It was designed by Bob, Betty and Margo. They credit the new set-up with an increase in milk yields to more than 9,000 litres. The herd’s calving index (CI) is 415 days. Yields are projected to hit 9,500 litres with a CI of 408 days. The target is, however, 10,000 litres at a CI of under 400 days.
The twin-span cubicle house has 200 cantilever cubicles with plenty of room in the passages and at the feed barrier so that cows and heifers can run together with no problems of bullying.
The Westfalia 16/32 parlour is integrated in the building, with an automatic backing gate easing cows up in the collecting area. That allows the heifers to be milked with the older cows instead of hanging at the back.
Ease of operation was not forgotten in the planning, and there are handy man-size spaces everywhere to save a lot of gate opening and climbing.
Bob, Betty and Margo thought a great deal about the feeding systems and a switch to a total mixed ration (TMR).
But, as the cows are run in one group, they prefer feeding to yield in the parlour. They are happy with the results they are getting on their specially designed BOCM blend.
Slurry is automatically scraped into a 200,000- gallon storage facility. When full it is pumped to an 800,000-gallon tank.
Bob said: “When so many cows and so much slurry come together, ventilation is critical – so the roof sheets are open-spaced to give a good circulation of air. We have no problems with rain or snow coming in.”
Milk is sold to Muller Wiseman on a Sainsbury contract. Margo said the new facility had ticked all the boxes required for welfare and environment standards, including carbon footprint, lameness scoring and fertility monitoring.
There are no bulls on the farm. Only proven bull semen is used. The emphasis being on type merit (above two), legs, udder attachment and milk 400kg+ with no negatives for fat and protein percentages.
Sexed semen has been used on the heifers with variable success.
During the recent expansion most of the heifers have been kept as replacements. However, the aim is to have a good surplus of heifers to sell on and supplement the income. All calves are reared by Betty, with bull calves sold to a neighbour between 100 and 150-days-old.
The main interest for the visitors from the grassland society was the silage and grazing grass, for which all the seed is supplied by Dunbar-based John Watson Seeds.
Bob said: “On John’s advice we use mainly Dundas and Duart Castle mixtures, which are late flowering perennial ryegrasses with a high D-value and sugar content.
“A little Timothy is included, but no clovers as reseeding is nearly always under a cereal crop and clover does not survive the weed control.”
For the first time last year some wholecrop was undersown, which gave the grass a headstart.
The family has yet to decide if the cows will be turned out in this summer, or kept housed.
Bob said: “Cows were grazed traditionally outside, but because the lead field from the new shed was a quagmire and required ploughing and reseeding, the cows were housed all last summer. This worked really well, and it might be difficult to go back to an outdoor system.”
As part of the new set-up, three new silage pits have been built, although there are still around 300 bales of haylage made for the dry cows.
Bob said: “Moving from a tower silage-making system to pits is a steep learning curve and in 2013 we made some silage too dry and some too wet, but the cows seem to be milking well on it.”
One major regret on the building was not covering the silage pits, but the development funding they received from the Scottish rural development programme was cut at the last minute by 25% and they decided this was an area where they could save spending.
The old cubicle house has been put to good use for in-calf heifers and dry cows, which are fed a barley-protein mix along with ad-lib ammonia-treated wheat straw.
Near dry cows and other youngstock are on bedded courts. Betty’s calf-rearing shed has individual pens, where the calves are kept for the first 10 days. They then go to a milk bar system in pens of six before going into batches to be fed a calf concentrate.
The herd is now bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) free but cows are vaccinated annually against it and infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR). The family has have just started to vaccinate every fifth dry cow for rotovirus to try to eliminate a problem which has raised its head this year in the calves.
Heifers are bulled when they reach a particular size, rather than an age.
Bob said: “Some years they grow on well with no setbacks and are calving down easily at two years and three months; but other years we bull them later.
“With a view to selling surplus heifers, I think people would rather buy them big and strong rather than prematurely in-calf.”
There is no doubt that the new system at Drumdreel will effectively and efficiently take the Mitchell family through the next few year.
But Bob added: “I had all the fun researching and building it, but I feel rather selfish as now it is up to Margo and Willie to pay it off.”