Trend in rising herd size stretches dairy farmers even further
The latest results from a farmer survey, conducted by the National Farm Research Unit (NFRU), reveal that in the last year the trend for increased dairy herd size is stretching farmers and that each individual dairy farmer is now responsible for managing more cows. In order to offset this increase and to ease the burden of this increased workload, they are using more outside contract services.
The National Farm Research Unit asked nearly two thousand dairy farmers about their herd size and the number of people that they had working in their dairy unit. Of those who had increased their dairy herd in the last twelve months, the average herd size had increased from 124 dairy cows to 137 dairy cows, while the average labour unit (which is the people working on the farm including the farmers and family) has decreased from 2.8 per farm to 2.6 per farm.
"The size of dairy herds is expanding, but the availability of labour is not. The result is that each person on the farm is now looking after around 10 more cows than they were this time last year. The question is how are farmers managing to maintain their dairy herds, increase their productivity and keep on top of all the farm management activities?" asks Jim Williams of the NFRU.
"One way that farmers are coping with increased herd size and reduced labour is by increasing their use of external contract services on the farm. For dairy farms that a year ago had between 2.5 and 5 employees on the farm and which have now reduced their labour units to between 0.5 to 2 employees, the number of contracting services that they used had increased by 42%,"explains Jim. MORE…….
"Another way that farmers are managing to cope is by bringing in a technician for insemination services. The NFRU survey reveals that for dairy herds of between 51 and 75 head, 35% of farms were using a technician. For farms with between 101 and 125 head, this went down to 28% but as the herd size increased to above 150 dairy cows, the use of a technician also increased to 35% of farms, easing the workload of the already busy dairyman," reports Jim Williams.
