Surrey dairy farmer Nick Ranson from Bowlhead Farm near Godalming, Surrey has become the 1,000th person to sign up to the dairy industry’s professional development register Dairy Pro, winning an expenses-paid trip to the Positive Farmers Conference in Ireland on 13/14 January 2016.
Nick, an Arla farmer-owner, was presented with his prize at the NEC’s Livestock Event on 9 July. He currently runs a 250-cow autumn block calving Friesian herd in partnership with his wife Jo and father Robert, and is looking forward to seeing how the new ideas he picks up at the conference will help them push the 250-cow, autumn block calving business forward.
“We’re strong believers in the value of training, and find benchmarking, discussion groups and farm walks invaluable tools for learning,” says Nick.
“As Arla farmer-owners we joined Dairy Pro so we could register our participation in Arla’s Sustainable Dairy Farming Growing Together programme. But we’ve discovered since then that recording the ways in which we keep our skills up to speed is useful for our own records too – and it shows the people we do business with that we’re committed to improvement.”
Nick says the current emphasis of the business is fertility and longevity – and producing as much milk from grass and maize as possible to keep costs down.
“While the cows are TMR-fed in an outside trough at the moment, we have plans to move to self-feed silage next year. We started self-feeding the heifers last year so we should have two years’ worth of trained animals to start. But we’re also investing in ways to become more efficient, such as installing a new 20/40 swing over parlour with in-parlour feeders as our old parlour has become unreliable and tired.”
Nick and Jo have two sons, aged 12 and 15, both of whom are ‘mad about farming’, says Nick. “The elder one is already looking at agriculture colleges for next year, and I can see how for young people like him, involvement in Dairy Pro would be really useful in keeping his options open as he works his way up the farming ladder.”
Arla UK was announced as Dairy Pro’s first corporate partner in April 2015. At the time, Vicky Porteus, Arla’s senior manager for quality assurance and sustainability, said: “Partnering with Dairy Pro is a logical progression to give formal recognition to the training and development delivered, and convey the professional standards of our members to customers and consumers.”
