Archive Article: 2001/02/23
John Glover
John Glover milks 140 cows
on his 52ha (130-acre)
county council holding near
Lutterworth, Leics. The
business is run in partnership
with neighbouring tenant
Mark Wilks, with dry cows
and youngstock kept at Mr
Wilks 32ha (80-acre) farm
SO YOU think farmers have an image problem? A couple of weeks ago I took our six-year-old son William for his swimming lesson after school. I was on the late side so when I changed to take him I grabbed the first clean clothes I could find, an old pair of cords, a check shirt and a baggy jumper.
As it is mostly mums who take the kids at that time of day and the kids are small, the male changing room was empty except for William, myself and another small boy. This boy was talkative and we soon learnt his name and which school he went to.
After the swimming lesson his confidence had grown further and he decided to ask me a question, "I dont want to be rude, but do you live on a farm?"
I knew that I had rushed to get changed and it was warm in the changing rooms so I wondered if it was the cows or aromatic silage that had given the game away. "Oh no, I cant smell anything, its just that you are wearing farmers clothes," he added.
We are currently looking for cows to cull. We had a conversation with Rob, our feed adviser, about whether or not we could achieve a 10,000-litre herd average on twice-a-day milking.
He advised us to simply cull all cows that did not reach this target. This seemed a bit on the extreme side as we would probably only have 20 cows left, but we have not forgotten it.
Of our 150 cows, 45 are heifers in their first lactation and we have another 35 heifers due to calve this summer. We would like to reduce cow numbers by about 10 to decrease the pressure on housing for next winter, so it is possible that we could cull 30% of the herd this year.
We quickly got to a list of 20 definite culls, then began to struggle, so we turned the problem around and produced a list of about 100 cows that we wanted to keep. The rest, about 30 cows, can be culled. Of course best laid plans will go wrong and you can bet most of the unexpected casualties will be the best cows. *
John Glover believes farmers may have an image problem after being confronted by a six-year-old boy who believed his cords, jumper and check shirt were a dead give-away.