Christian Hitz farms 40ha in partnership with his parents near Brugg, a market-sized town in a valley where three rivers meet in northern Switzerland, less than an quarter of an hour from the German border.

He works full-time on the farm along with a farm labourer, while his parents also contribute, in particular his mother who takes care of the evening milking.

The farm carries 85 Holstein cows, with replacements reared on outlying farms in the hillier land, while male calves are sold off at three weeks of age.

It is a Holstein herd of high-yielding cows producing 9,000 litres annually with 3.3% protein and 3.8% fat. This gives an annual milk output from the farm of around 750,000kg. Mastitis is rare, with cell count around 100,000 – less than a third of the acceptable limit in Switzerland.

Only a small portion of the land is around the farmyard and this is used to accommodate the cows outside between April and October. However, while the cows are out and appear to be grazing contentedly, this is described by Christian as the “dessert”, with main nutrition provided from the huge silo bins.

The core diet is a mix of maize, grass silage, oilseed rape, soya and wheat, which is fed in a mixed ration. Grazing is very much a comfort experience, with cows required to have 800 square metres of space, so intensive paddock grazing isn’t practised.

Access for animals to the outdoors is an important part of the government’s support package for farmers, but the investment recently of the equivalent of £800,000 in a shed, 12-point parlour and effluent storage facilities suggests the centre for the farm is indoors. Up to 50,000 litres of rainwater from the roofs is captured and recycled for washing the buildings and yard. Solar panels are installed, with all the electricity generated sold to the Swiss national grid.

Getting affordable farm labour is an issue in Switzerland, with a cost to the farmer in excess of the equivalent of £3,600 per month. Non-national labour is more affordable and is used on this farm where the cost is around £2,000 per month, along with on-farm accommodation.

Christian’s father is progressively withdrawing from the business as Christian strives to buy his share out. Farmers are effectively forced to retire at 65 as government support isn’t paid beyond that age. For Mr Hitz senior, it is an active retirement, as not only does he still help on the farm, but he is actively involved in farming union politics, having being a past chair of the dairy committee.

Like the rest of the world, Swiss farmers are unhappy with present milk prices, which average around the equivalent of 50p/litre, which of course would be a Scottish dairy farmer’s idea of heaven.

Dairy produce is the only area where Switzerland is more than self-sufficient, with 20% of production exported, usually in the form of premium yogurts and cheeses. Swiss farmers are concerned about the prospect of the UK leaving the EU, but when pressed as to whether or not Switzerland should join, Christian’s view was “yes” in the longer term, a decade or so from now, but not immediately.

Urs Meier, beef-rearing farm

Urs Meier has been involved in intensive beef rearing and finishing of male calves since the mid-1970s, from a cattle shed in the middle of a Swiss village.

In 2010, he bought 13ha of land on the outskirts of the village at the equivalent of £75,000/ha. On this, he has built a state-of-the-art cattle-rearing and finishing shed, with the capacity to handle 300 cattle. The quality of the facility is reflected in a build cost of the equivalent of £2.50m, which includes the automated feeding systems and silos.

His calf-to-beef business is built on a cycle of buying 48 four-week-old male calves every two months. While there are auction marts in Switzerland, Urs sources his calves from a broker in the belief that he has more consistent quality and reduced disease risk in a direct farm-to-farm transfer for young stock.

The high beef price in Switzerland is reflected in calf purchase price, which is currently around the equivalent of £10.50/kg liveweight, which means a 75kg four-week-old calf costs over the equivalent of £770.

Calves are initially fed a mix ration of milk and solid nutrition and weaned completely off milk by the time they are two months old. Each calf wears a computerised strap on its neck to regulate its feed intake.

The Swiss direct payment system includes several elements of enhanced animal welfare, as does marketing labels for the end product.

Urs produces for the Swiss Terra label, which gets him the equivalent of an extra 40p/kg when the animals go to market. This requires straw bedding, 4.5m space and access to outdoors when growing.

As each batch of calves grows, it is moved along the pens in the sheds which are adapted to accommodate the growing animals with bigger cubicles and proportionately more space per animal.

The feed ration is also modified, although the automated feeding system operates across all of the sheds, with the ability to adjust the ration that is deposited at each pen. The unit is filled from the large silos automatically four times each day and completes eight cycles of deposition feed in front of the animals. In this zero-grazing rearing and finishing system, the limited available grass is harvested and mixed into the ration, which is predominantly maize, but also includes sugar beet, wheat and soya.

While Urs is relatively happy with his system, despite the huge investment, he is of the view that the ongoing increasing purchase price is the biggest risk to his business.

There is a relative scarcity of calves, as dairy cow numbers have shrunk 2% in the past year, explained by the relative depressed state of the Swiss dairy industry.

When his cattle finish around 16 to 18 months, a draw is taken every two to three weeks. This reflects the fact that even though they come in in batches of 48 every two months, they don’t all thrive at the same rate and finish together.

With a base selling price around the equivalent of £7.20/kg plus bonuses, putting a male animal into the equivalent of £2,500 is very achievable and a business sufficiently profitable to support the huge land and building investment on this farm.