14 WHITE HOUSE FARM JUN / JUL 2024 • farmers-mart . co . uk
14 WHITE HOUSE FARM JUN / JUL 2024 • farmers-mart . co . uk
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Proud to work with Andrew Leggott of White House Farm .
Tel : 01325 718498 | 07876 491766 Austen Email : austen @ lowgrangequarry . co . uk www . lowgrangequarryltd . co . uk
Proud to support White House Farm , wishing them continued success .
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“ These cows are like Formula 1 racing cars , you get out of them what you put into them and the trouble with grass is its quality fluctuates too much . Early in the grazing year it ’ s fantastic stuff but after the first month that quality soon deteriorates and if it ’ s a wet day and they are outside they ’ ll all stand under the hedge ; and if they ’ re too hot they have not a lot of shade . “ We house all ours in sheds . One shed is ventilated , the other has a real good pitch on it for natural ventilation . They have clean water . Everything is so much more controlled . There ’ s always work to do to keep them well tuned up . My passion is not just the cows but looking after them , a bit like a Formula 1 Racing team , trying to improve the performance .
“ We ’ ve farmed out the AI families to the RMS Genus stud . They send a technician to our farm every day and he walks them , talks to the cows and anything in season he serves . We ’ re very confident in the ability of the RMS Genus team , they ’ re all well trained and knowledgeable . They also send out a reproductive guy who takes into account everything that we want out of our animals . Andrew knows exactly what he wants . “ We want the best traits , good feet , good udders , capacity to eat , and we genomically test the cows also to look at health traits . All that goes into our own custom index and it tells us the specific bulls available to breed with the cows based on that index . It takes away all those hours and nights from me of having to sift through all of that information .
“ We calve , like most , all year round . Ideally , we want a very level profile not just for Arla but for the milk , and also a level profile for our own system because of the robot capacity . If you have a flush then a dip comes , then you ’ re over capacity and then under capacity so we have to try and manage our herd . Cow longevity is another consideration . “ Ours generally average 4 lactations . We had a cow the other day who has had 9 calves and is giving more now than she ’ s ever given . But you also have
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extremes of those you can ’ t get back in calf . We use our custom index and have a cut-off . Anything above a certain figure gets put to sexed semen , anything below gets put to beef and we breed out the lower end .
“ We need 15 heifers produced per month , with a little bit of tolerance in there . That ’ s 180 heifer calves , and at a 50 per cent conception rate we need to put 360-400 services into our herd to achieve that .
“ There might be cows that are not very fertile , so they get two chances of sexed semen . If they don ’ t hold in calf to those two then they will go to a beef .
Andrew has just shifted his beef AI from Wagyu to Aberdeen Angus .
“ We ’ ve been doing Wagyu and the beef is meant to be fantastic . We are really more interested in milk , but we like a calf that ’ s worth a bit of money , and predominantly we want the milk , and the cow to calve easily , that ’ s where it comes in for us .
“ The reality is that Wagyu calves are really quite small but there ’ s a premium on them for the quality of the beef , so it works both ways . You get a good price for your calf , and your cow has easy calving . However , a similar scheme has come on recently for Aberdeen Angus , producing a very similar sized calf but the Angus is proving a bit more hardy , whereas the Wagyus need a bit more TLC .
“ The guy that ’ s taking my calves at 2 weeks old asked whether it would matter if we went to Angus ? I said not if price was the same , and he can get a premium in a similar way from ABP in York .
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