Farmer Focus: J Paton & Sons, Dumfries & Galloway
Many generations of the Paton family have farmed at Auchleand in Newton Stewart, Dumfries & Galloway and it is currently run by father and son team Drew and Andrew Paton. The 260 cow milking herd is a mixture of Holstein, Montbeliard, Norwegian Red and Viking Red crosses, with 150 followers.
The Autumn calving herd, calve between September and December and utilises the summer grass with a grazing paddock system. They breed for four weeks with sexed semen, and after that, they sweep up with Belgian Blue and Angus with the beef calves being sold at 3-8 weeks.
Since 2007 the Patons have milk recorded with CIS, assisted by Regional Manager Elizabeth Brown, and also utilise the health testing services and reports available through milk recording.
They extended their parlour last year to become a 20/40 Delaval Swing Over to speed up milking times. The herd is currently averaging 9,227kg, 4.43% Butter Fat, 3.54% Protein with a 371 Calving Interval. The family is continuously investing in the farm so they are able to maintain cow numbers and become more efficient. Their latest investment has been to upgrade to foam mattresses, which have seen happier cows with increased lying times.
The herd are milk recorded on a monthly basis with a member of the CIS team visiting the farm to take samples which are processed at the ICAR and UKAS accredited laboratory in Shropshire within 48 hours. The testing enables the family to identify high cell count cows for selective dry cow therapy. They do this by using the cell count exception report on YourHerd, which also features a number of other reports to monitor and benchmark herd performance and health status.
Andrew also checks the fat and protein percentages when deciding which of the herd to breed from as well as keeping an eye on the protein and fat ratio to check there isn’t any Ketosis. The CIS health testing services, available through milk recording, are also used to find any positive Johnes cows and to test for BVD.
The other service used by Andrew and Drew is CIS Pregcheck. The non-invasive pregnancy diagnosis is easily incorporated into routine milk analysis when milk recording and is a useful tool for the accurate screening of pregnancy in cattle. Used at certain times of the year within the herd it provides a quick, labour efficient, hassle free way of PDing the herd.
-ends-