Farmers Weekly Awards 2026: Livestock Adviser of the Year

Dan Humphries’ rigorous focus on the nutrition of dairy cows, which has boosted milk yields and animal health for his clients, has helped him secure this year’s Livestock Adviser of the Year award.

See also: FW Awards: Meet the 2026 Livestock Adviser of the Year finalists

The Shropshire vet has taken on board the latest technical programmes to improve herd performance, while devising training sessions to help develop farm staff and foster good teamwork.

His approach is to spend time with dairy managers and their teams to give them the skills to improve performance, and he spends 50% of his time with his “wellies off” in the office to focus on this training.

He is using two nutrition programmes. Agricultural Modeling and Training Systems (AMTS) Nutrition has a rationing model for dairy cows, while algoMilk estimates the nutritional needs for each cow to improve income over feed costs.

These have helped him increase milk yields and herd health in the dairy cows he looks after. However, for him, income over costs is the most important sign of success.

Client relationship

The results at one of Dan’s clients, Harper Adams University, are impressive. Here, milk yields for 400-strong Holstein herd increased from 28kg a cow a day in 2022 to 33kg in 2024.

They went up further, to 44kg, in 2026 after three-time-a-day milking started in 2024.

But Dan reiterates that he is not solely interested in yield, rather it is income over costs that is important, and so making milk production more resource efficient and sustainable.

Alice Sault, the dairy manager at Harper Adams, says Dan’s work on the farm over the past 14 years has pushed staff to do better, and he spends considerable time on training and understanding the needs of staff.

“Dan has been key to improving yields through better health and nutrition,” she says.

Technical knowledge

Dan’s seven-strong vet practice is one of a very few with a total emphasis on dairy. He also runs a consultancy, Dairy Insight.

The focus on nutrition has helped to improve fertility, mastitis, growth rates and foot health, and has led to only one out-of-hours call a month for a vet practice covering 10,000 cows.

Dan says nutrition is just over a half of the cost of a dairy business, and it is the only lever that farmers can use quickly to improve the performance of their milking herds.

Antibiotics use has been reduced to a very low level, and critically important antibiotics have not been sold by the vet practice since 2017.

The protein content of the ration fed to the Harper Adams dairy cows was cut some years ago to 14% from 18%, yet milk yields kept going up.

The herd has been soya-free since 2018 with the main source of protein coming from protected rapemeal.

What the judges say

Dan is doing today what many farm vets would aspire to do in the future. He can identify what matters to his clients in a way that not only emphasises cow performance but also puts people at the heart of the enterprise.