Nigel Corbett incurred a total animal health cost during 2016 of £4,839 which equates to 0.74p/l for the business.

This farm is a 100% dairy stock farm with no beef animals. A total of 111 livestock units on the farm leaves the cost per livestock unit at £43/LU.

This includes all drugs purchased, veterinary intervention and vet call-out costs on the farm. An itemised breakdown of the total farm health cost is in Figure 1.

From Figure 1, it is clear the main health costs on the Corbett farm are cow fertility treatments and milking cow mastitis treatment.

The fertility work on the farm is carried out by the farm vet and includes all fertility intervention like fixed-time AI, CIDRs and drugs for heifers, drugs used, and also pregnancy scanning for the herd. Vet call-out charges for this work are included in the call-out cost.

This year, some pre-breeding fertility work was done in conjunction with the vet. Three weeks before breeding started in December, the vet inspected cows showing no signs of heat on the farm.

This work proved beneficial, with 70% of the cows inspected going in-calf to first service when breeding started.

The fertility work on this farm can also be coupled with a high culling rate specifically for herd infertility. It is important to highlight that this is part of the overall farm policy to improve herd fertility performance using veterinary intervention to improve conception and a specific culling policy to get the fertility-problem cows out of the herd.

While this has a significant cost for the farm in the short-term, the overall farm plan is to lift production through better fertility in the herd, with a more compact calving profile with higher conception rates.

Mastitis treatment was the next-highest cost, representing 22% of the herd health bill. A total of £1,050 was spent on milking cow antibiotic tubes.

While this cost is higher than what Nigel would aim for, it has been reduced from 2015. During 2015, Nigel had a high incidence of mastitis in the herd during housing. The problem was isolated to the cubicle bedding material used.

Nigel currently only vaccinates for BVD and leptospirosis. With a higher culling rate and fewer replacements available to come into the herd, Nigel will have to consider purchasing stock. This may open the herd to a higher disease risk and further vaccines will have to be considered, depending on what stock are purchased.

Hoof care costs only include copper sulphate used in the footbath. All hoof paring is carried out by Nigel and no cost is placed on this other than materials used.

The wormer and fluke treatment only came in at 7% of the total herd health cost. This figure did not include product carried over from the previous year and used during 2016.

In 2016, 27 cows in total left the farm; 23 cull cows and four dead cows. This equated to a culling rate of 27% and a cow mortality rate of 4.5%.

Figure 2 highlights the various reasons for cows leaving the farm, with the key reasons for culling cows being infertility and high SCC, which may also have been repeat mastitis culprits within the herd.

On the farm: Nigel Corbett Banbridge, Co Down

The autumn-born calves are reared at this stage, with calves now weaned, and we are only still feeding milk to the tail-end of beef-bred calves which will be sold over the next few days. I still have 10 cows to calve on the farm which are due over the next five weeks. From the 72 cows calved on the farm, we have 28 heifer calves on the ground and now weaned.

I have lost zero calves so far this year, which is a great help to stock numbers. The past few years, we have been short of replacement heifers, with only 14 due to come into the herd in the autumn of this year.

This shortage in replacement stock is due to some fertility issues in the herd, which ultimately meant it took longer to get cows back in-calf and subsequently cows would then be bred with beef sires or the beef stock bull.

Under the Dairylink project, herd fertility is a key focus area for us. In an attempt to get calving more compact, we now have a set 10-week breeding period for black and white replacements, which started on 15 December 2016.

Ultimately, I want this to be the first eight weeks of breeding, but due to shortage of replacement stock, we bred for 10 weeks to help build numbers.

So far, 60 cows have been served, with 72 straws used. I have started pregnancy diagnosis on the first cows served. In the first three weeks, 25 cows had been served with 20 confirmed in-calf.