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Posted 18 December
The 91ÇÑ×Ó Adams Dairy team has been shortlisted for the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers’ 2024 Gold Cup.
The team were nominated for the historic trophy – which was first awarded in 1920 – by their milk recorder, NMR. The award is given to the dairy farming business which judges decide is the best in the UK and is a mark of all-round excellence.
Ruminant Sector Manager Kate Robinson said: “We met all the criteria for the first time in 91ÇÑ×Ó’s history with the herd – and to start with, we were really pleased we’d met the criteria to apply.
“We then had a bit of a discussion about if we should follow it up, and I was ‘like: ‘Do you know what, we’ve got absolutely nothing to lose by entering!’
“We had a couple of meetings with David, our nutritionist, me and the Deputy Sector Managers for the Dairy and young stock, Alice, Becky and Carrie.
“Alice spent a lot of time with David getting all the full dairy costings together and making sure that it was all up to date. We put the entry together, and a lot of thought and care went into it – we backed it up with a lot of photos and data.
“Obviously, it worked – and the fact RABDF came back to say: ‘you have made the finalists’ was absolutely brilliant!”
The main dairy unit at 91ÇÑ×Ó Adams provides accommodation for 400 cows, which are milked three times a day in a rotary parlour. The parlour has computerised cow identification, which records crucial data about each cow, such as her milk yields. Cows also have CowManager ear tags which relay a lot of real time data to the farm team
The parlour is also laid out to enable research and teaching – with students at 91ÇÑ×Ó Adams, from undergraduate right through to PhD, learning on the farm every day.
The team will find out at Dairy Tech 2025, to be held on February 6, if they have clinched this year’s trophy. The shortlisting for the RABDF award follows several NMR awards in 2024, including a series of first prizes.
Kate added: “It’s just a credit to the whole of the team – it’s not just the dairy team that have inputs into the dairy, it’s everybody involved with the cows.
“It’s the whole of the ruminant team; it’s those within the farm ops team who produce our forages for our cows; it’s the beef guys, who will come in and help when needed; its Tony and the sheep team, who help with our sheep grazing and heifer grazing.
“Everything just fits in together, and everybody has to pull together in a cycle to make it work.
“Two years into our Future Farm, and we are getting there with it all: it’s all starting to come together really well and everyone is working together across all the enterprises.
I think the nomination is fantastic for the Dairy staff, but I feel it’s definitely one for the whole farm.”
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