Dairy Talk: Tom Rawson - 'The weather, the food and the beer did not disappoint as we reflected on the last few years and caught our breath'

Well thats another year done, with the highlights being a record-breaking milk price and plenty of dry hot weather. The lowlights being huge cost inflation and the drought.

We have finished calving at home and, as I write this, we are wading through breeding.

Calving was as smooth as I can ever remember, only having to physically calve about 5% of cows and not even using a box of calcium between the 230 calvings.

Calf prices hit a rocky patch at one point, but across all beef calves sold in Wharfedale market, we will have averaged about 185/head at 30 days old with our best Blue at more than 400, plus about 45 Wagyu calves going direct to Warrendale Wagyu on contract.

Weaning

We decided to keep the Wagyu to weaning to see if we could increase our margin on them as opposed to letting them go at three weeks old.

Time will tell and I will let you know the final scores on the doors.

Our buildings team has been particularly busy this last month with a number of projects completed on-farm to try and make the winters easier. This includes a slurry pit extension, a new feed pad and converting a straw barn to a workshop for our expanding contracting team.

The biggest pour was 26 lorry loads of concrete in two days. I was glad I was unable to attend this time as the last time nearly finished me off. Its a young persons, or possibly just a fit persons, game.

After a three-year break, Catherine and I managed to get away on holiday to our preferred winter sun location of Cape Verde. We had probably the most relaxing holiday we have ever had, with a group of 12 of us in total, including no children.

The weather, the food and the beer did not disappoint as we reflected on the last few years and caught our breath.

Nuffield

At this years Nuffield Farming conference in Cardiff, I was lucky enough to be made vice-chair of the trust and will hopefully take on the role of chair in two years time.

It is a huge honour for me as it feels like no time at all since I first got my scholarship feeling very out of my depth stood in The Farmers Club.

Nuffield is an amazing opportunity to travel anywhere in the world and research a farming-related topic. If you are 45 years old or under, please take a look on the website (nuffieldscholar.org).

The big question on everyones mind is milk price. In the words of Ian Potter what goes up must come down.

Price

By the time you read this, Arla will have announced Januarys price. Even though our current milk price is 54ppl, our annual average is still about 44ppl, so in cash income terms the next few months are still looking positive.

I guess it is anyones guess as to what the price will be this time next year.

High prices or not, our focus this year is on increasing average yield per cow on each farm. This will be a mix of weeding out under-achievers and increasing milk from forage by a target of 500 litres per cow.

It is no coincidence that our most profitable unit is the one with the highest herd average sat at about 6,000 litres per cow or 550kg of combined fat and protein.

Forage stocks are representative of our different sites geography. Cumbria and Lancashire have plenty of feed, however the picture looks considerably worse as you look south and east.

A final cut in mid-November at home of about 450 tonnes of grass certainly made for an easier Christmas and New Year. Roll on turnout.

Tom Rawson

Tom Rawson, who lives in West Yorkshire, is a director of Evolution Farming, a business with a team of 55 staff. They manage about 3,300 cows across nine units, two of which are organic and one which is in organic conversion, located in seven different counties in the North West, Midlands and eastern regions of England.