Dry cow plan paves way for Lawries' success

Last year’s award provided the icing on the cake for brothers, Euan and Andrew Lawrie, and father, David, from Pettinain, South Lanarkshire. It followed a lot of hard work which saw the move from their dairy in Kinross in 1998, to an up and coming, efficient and productive enterprise at Grangehall.

“When we moved to Grangehall, we basically started from scratch. We purchased the 75 milkers that were originally on the farm – old-fashioned Friesians and Ayrshires – and we gradually built up numbers following purchases from dispersal sales at Lanark and Carlisle, as well as a few select females from the Brewsters, at Boclair and the Brysons, at Dykehead,” explained Andrew.

“We now run 250 pedigree Holsteins, as well as 180 young stock with 45% of our milking herd comprising heifers due to recent expansion through retention of home-bred heifers. The herd is split into three groups, with the main group made up of 120 to 140 mid lactation cows; 70 late lactation cows and 30 fresh calvers.”

Grangehall cows are proving milky too, boasting a rolling herd average of 10,300 litres at 4.1% BF and 3.25% P with somatic cell counts of 100-120, on a twice daily milking regime. The highest yielding cow has produced a 305-day lactation of 18,000 litres.

Pregnancy rates are currently sitting at a 23% with a calving interval of 385 days. Between 50 and 60% of the cows and heifers get two chances of sexed semen, with the remainder and any which fail to hold, covered by British Blue or Aberdeen-Angus genetics. Once pregnancy scanned, cows and heifers are left with a sweeper bull, with heifers calving down at an average age of 24 months.

“We buy most of our semen from Worldwide Sires and Cogent. We are looking to breed a balanced type of cow with good health traits. We want trouble-free cows of a medium size, not overly big cows,” Andrew commented.

A high health status is something the Lawries are keen to maintain which means a fortnightly visit from the vet and foot trimming.

“Anything over 50 days is vet inspected – if there’s nothing wrong then they are left and the vet returns again two weeks later if cows haven’t come into season. We also occasionally do fresh checks on cows if we know they’ve had a difficult calving, have twins or look a bit dirty,” explained Andrew.

Lameness is also kept to a minimum with all cattle getting their feet trimmed six weeks pre-drying off and at 50 to 60 days post-calving.

The entire herd is housed 24/7 in two main cubical sheds for the milkers and the dry cows. Heifers are spread across two sheds and all the calves are under one roof. Slatted channels are also located throughout the buildings that feeds the concrete walled slurry store tank, which has a holding capacity of 1m gallons.

Cow comfort has always been important here with cattle having access to Wilson mattresses which are covered with sawdust sourced from Inverness. Interestingly however, the introduction of 110 plastic cubicles for the fresh calvers and the late lactation group have proved the best buy for the Lawries.

“We trialled some Easyfix plastic cubicles last year and the cattle that have access to them are so much comfier, so we’ll be looking to invest in more in the future,” stated Euan.

Investment doesn’t stop there either. The family also replaced the farm’s old 14 x 14 Herringbone parlour to a new GEA 20 x 40, fitted in 2012, with the addition of Apollo iodine dipping and flushing clusters, in 2019. Cows are fed for a maintenance plus 32 litres in the parlour. There are also outer parlour feeders filled with a non-mineralised Davidsons Autolac cake.

Young stock rearing is completely in-house, with calves lifted at birth and placed in double pens for their first three weeks and batched in groups of eight. Dairy heifer calves are reared on a high energy milk replacer and fed eight litres of milk concentrate per day from there on, with the aim of achieving a daily live weight gain of 0.85kg and 1kg per day.

Calves are speaned between nine and 10-weeks of age and placed in a separate young stock shed, where they are then fed 2kg of a high protein cake and straw, before they are sent away to another unit to be reared on haylage or silage and a 2.5kg blend of cake and barley at seven-months-old.

Beef calves are sold between four to six weeks through Lanark Market – achieving up to £400 per head.

For the past 10 years, Euan and Andrew have relied on the expertise of Davidsons Animal Feeds as their main supplier of blends used to feed the cattle and sheep, as well as Galloway and MacLeod and LS Smellie and Sons from time to time.

“We have been working with our Davidsons' rep, John Rogers, for a while now and he’s always at the end of the phone if we need him, as well as regularly visiting us to sample our silage and wholecrop,” Andrew added.

Currently, the herd is fed a ration of home-grown silage, wholecrop, mineral high protein blend, ground maize, home-grown barley and super grains or Invergold, depending on what is available at time of purchase.

Young stock and dry cows are rationed and fed with barley and cake purchased through Archie Leitch, of Almins.

Innovation and investment have been key to upsizing and modernising the dairy enterprise at Grangehall, and the same holds true in the new dry cow shed, where Euan and Andrew focus on using Premier Nutrition’s Transition Management System (TMS). This on-farm recording service assesses how cows pass through the transition period from 30 days pre-calving to 30 days post-calving.

With UK dairy farmers losing up to 5p per litre in production due to the poor transition into lactation for high yielding cows, the TMS has enabled the Lawries to pinpoint areas of management and nutrition that can lead to improved herd performance.

“A TMS assessor comes out to visit us every month to assess the herd, focussing on body score condition, lameness, rumen fill and hock hygiene of all our dry and fresh cows and heifers,” said Euan.

“The data collected provides a TMS score and a monthly report, which we can compare on a month-to-month basis. This allows us to see if the changes we are making are effectively improving the health and productivity of the herd.

“Previously, our dry cows were kept in straw bedded pens – leading to mastitis and cell count issues during busy periods – however, we now have a new dry cow shed which was built in 2020, and they are much happier for it,” he added.

The new shed houses two main groups – the far off’s and the transition group. Both are fed a forage ration and 1kg of soya while the transition group also receive 2.2kg of a specialised transition mix in preparation for calving and maintaining condition.

While the Lawries breed their own replacements and retain around 90 heifers per year, the family occasionally invests in some of the world’s top female breeding lines, in a bid to introduce new bloodlines.

“Ensuring we have good cow families within our herd is important. We’re not always looking to breed the next Highland Show champion but functional cows.

"In recent years, we have purchased females from notable families to include Ambrosia, Apple and O-Kalibra and Twizzle – world renowned females for quality although this is more of a hobby when it comes to the pedigree cattle,” explained Andrew.

The Lawrie family have always been keen to educate children and the general public about dairy farming, and have opened their doors to the Royal Highland Education Trust (RHET) for farm visits.

“Pre-covid, we would be welcoming schools up to three times per year in order to give an insight to the day-to-day running of a dairy farm. We believe events like this, as well as Open Farm Sundays are a great way to open the general public’s eyes in terms of how the initial product ends up on their supermarket shelves,” said Euan.

Looking to the future, Andrew concluded: “We hope to still be farming here in future but it all depends on the children and their futures – if they are interested in joining the business then we would support them, however, we would need to expand or probably split the business.

“There is a shift in the industry to look to be carbon neutral and environmentally focussed and the dairy industry, in particular, needs to be seen to be more efficient.”

FARM facts:

Family farm: The Lawries moved to Grangehall in 1998 and is home to: Euan and his wife, Hazel, and three children, Grace, Cayden and Murray; Andrew and his wife Susan and two children, Cameron and Blair; and father, David.

Acreage: 400 acres with 65 acres of wholecrop wheat; 30 acres of spring barley and 10 acres of winter barley.

Cows: 250 milking pedigree Holsteins and 180 young stock.

Housing: 24/7 – Most of the breeding herd is AI'd with sexed semen or put to a British Blue or Aberdeen-Angus bull.

Sheep: 30 pure Beltex ewes to breed commercial shearling rams. Farm is also home to 90 cross ewes as ET recipients or to put to Beltex and cross tups to produce prime lambs. Some 400 store lambs are bought for finishing in the back end and are sold either through Lanark, or deadweight.

Labour: One full-time worker, Connor McKenna and one part-time milker, Catriona Scott.

Contract: Tesco (partnered with Müller) and the farm is part of the Tesco Müller TSGD (Tesco Sustainable Dairy Group). Roughly 75% of the milk goes to the Tesco price with the remaining 25% at standard Müller price.

ON THE spot:

Hobbies? Biking and rugby – they are great for getting us off the farm for a few hours.

Best investment? Definitely, the new dry cow shed.

Anything you'd change? If we were starting from scratch we would like sand beds, however, with our system now it's not possible.