No need to shake it up: Family who try not to over complicate things crowned country’s best dairy farm.
WHEN the Baillie family sat down to dinner at the Scottish Agriculture Awards, they were looking forward to a great night out but had “no expectations” of winning.
“To us, being nominated was a real achievement among such well-respected farms,” says Gavin Baillie, 38, who farms Crumhaugh Farm, Lanarkshire, in partnership with his brother James, 39, and parents Jimmie and Isabel.
When they visited, judges of the Dairy Farm of the Year category – which was sponsored by GEA Farm Technologies – noted that the “extremely well-presented pedigree Holstein cows” caught their eyes.
This was no one-off, but rather a validation of JD Baillie and Sons concerted effort to focus on animal health.
“Ten years ago we put in a new parlour and ever since our main focus has been not to over-complicate things – to keep things as simple as possible,” explains Gavin. “Our focus has been on animal health. Things like improving the quality of youngstock, getting better growth rates, reducing mastitis and antibiotic usage, along with things like foot health. We don’t tend to keep passengers.”
Over the last few years the herd has become Checs accredited as free of BVD and free of Johnes. Mastitis rates are in single figures with an average cell count for the year of 81.
“A combination of these health initiatives has helped bring about a huge reduction in antibiotic use over the years,” explains Gavin. “Only 5% of cows dried off are being given antibiotics and 95% of the herd receiving sealant only. Any cases of mastitis are first treated with anti-inflammatory drugs, exterior mint etc and rehydration drenches with antibiotics only used when needed.”
The GEA parlour is a 20/40 swing over design and the family also has a Lely robotic scraper. There are 255 pedigree Holstein cows in the herd, with a similar number of youngstock following on. Other than around 50 fresh-calved heifers sold each year; the remainder are kept as replacements. They are milked twice a day, with the 11,100 litres produced per year going into a Tesco aligned Muller contract, at 4.27%BF and 3.53%P.
Rather than passages being manually cleared out once a day, the Lely Discovery 90S automatic manure scraper for hard and slatted flooring can be programmed to work constantly. The Baillie family report that this has made a massive difference in cow foot health, with keeping the feet clean bringing knock-on benefits to not only foot but also udder health.
An Angus bull is used to sweep up youngstock after they receive one straw of sexed semen. The best cows to pedigree Holstein and the remainder are beef-bred, to either Angus or Belgium Blue bulls. A regular buyer, in fact a cousin of dad Jimmie’s, takes the calves at between four and eight weeks, other than occasionally when they keep small batches themselves until stores when forage stocks and shed space allows.
Aside from the overall wellbeing of the cows, the judges noticed the “excellent feed ration” in front of them, which is delivered once per day with regular pushups.
It is of some pride to the family that they use their own 190 acres of cereals to feed the cattle, growing their own barley and wheat, with straw used for bedding up. There is around 250 acres of grassland cut three times for silage, 70 acres cut a 4th time, plus 40 acres of winter wheat grown for wholecrop, with the majority of the field/tractor work still done in house. Soil types on the farm range from very light alluvial soils alongside the Avon Water to heavy clay loams.
“We can all turn our hands to the tractor work,” says Gavin, who says the family is very keen to recognise the contribution made by the farm’s one full-time member of staff Mitchell Young.
“We had no full-time staff before Mitchell arrived and in the three and-a-half years he has been with us it’s transformed the way we work. Before, we had been too busy to see the wood for the trees but now have more time to make decisions and get off farm, especially with James and I having young families.”
Mitchell enjoys showing cattle and him taking the lead – literally – has brought real enjoyment and some downtime for the family at the local shows. Two girls from a local village also now help with milking on a part-time basis.
“Mitchell being keen to show has given us all a bit of a boost as we used to show a lot more when James and I were younger but maybe lost the bug a bit, by not having time.” adds Gavin. “Our parents are still very actively involved in the farm, with dad doing a lot of milking and looking after young stock. Mum does most of the paperwork, still takes her turn milking and is always a useful extra pair of hands at busy times like silaging.”
On the subject of the future, the brothers say they cannot commend their parents enough for tackling the often-tricky subject of farm succession at an early date.
“Me and James are so lucky that dad had the foresight to get plans for succession put into place early,” says Gavin, who is married to Christine and has two children, five-year-old Harris and one-year-old Brodie.
“Our grandad was early to hand over the reins and dad always said that he would do the same. I do not think you can underestimate the peace and stability this gives the next generation; knowing that the succession side of things is sorted is probably one of the reasons why we are both so enthusiastic about the farm and thinking about the future.”
As well as focusing on cow health over the last ten years, the Baillie family have replaced or renewed all the cattle housing. They have also increased slurry storage, reducing reliance on straw. The milking herd are kept inside.
“We are just ready to kick off construction on new housing for dry cows and in-calf heifers. Just with the very nature of dry cows it got pushed back to one of those ‘get to it someday’ jobs. But finally getting the dry cows into their optimum housing will free up some space within the milking herds sheds. This will give us the scope to increase cow numbers by around 30. Not a huge number as we feel we are very sustainable as we are and don’t want to lumber ourselves with too much to do. There is a great value in getting in at night and seeing our families before they have gone to bed.”
James is married to Jennifer and also has two children, eight-year-old Alix and six-year-old Jocelyn. While Gavin worked on the farm straight from school, James studied agricultural bioscience, going on to train as an agronomist and also spent time working for a feed company.
Gavin lives at Crumhaugh Farm and James lives at nearby Over Dalserf Farm, Ashgill. While the parlour is at Crumhaugh, Over Dalserf is used for rearing youngstock.
With Crumhaugh’s location, between Stonehouse and Strathaven, diversification of currently unused traditional buildings is one idea for future growth and an eye to the next generation.
“With mum and dad so forward thinking, there’s one thing for sure – we have a tough act to follow,” concludes Gavin.
