Steven Reid gets the dairy/cheese balance at Howe Farm, Orkney

"Montbéliardes were introduced to the herd in 2005 in a bid to improve the value of the cross-bred calf and provide a second income stream to the milk.

"Now, 15 years on, we are introducing a third breed, the Viking Red to make a three-way cross cow to hopefully improve hybrid vigour and milk solids.

"We have gone from having a basic liquid contract to being paid on milk solids in the last two years to try and improve efficiencies at the factory – making more cheese from less milk," said Steven.

More than three generations of the Reid family have farmed at Howe Farm, Stromness, going back to the 1920. The farm was the first start to milking cows around the time of the second world war to provide liquid milk for the army camps. Once the war ended and all the troops left, Orkney Cheese was founded to make use of the extra milk.

Since then the herd was built up to 180 Ayrshires in the 1970s before switching to the Holstein and more recently, a mixture of pure Holsteins and Montbéliarde cross Holsteins.

Today there are 245 dairy cows in the herd with the business extending to 700 acres making it one of the larger dairy farms on the islands.

Around two thirds of the ground is owned with the rest made up of rented land. Steven and his wife Gemma work on the farm alongside Steven's parents Bertie and Evelyn, with full time assistance from herdswoman Julia Slater and general farm worker, Erlend Ritch.

All AI is done on farm by Steven or Julia with sexed semen used on the best 90 cows at a cost of £25 to £40 with the result being that only a handful dairy-sired bull calves are born. The remainder are AI'd with a beef sire, with Aberdeen-Angus or British Blue sires being used at a cost of £5 and £15 per straw. An Aberdeen-Angus sweeper bull is also used after first AI.

Replacement rate is around 22% with heifers synchronised to calve at 24-27 months of age.

“We have been bulling them at this age for the last six years and I don’t know if there is any difference in herd productivity or longevity, but it does reduce the amount of youngstock on the farm," said Steven.

All milk from the herd and the 13 other farms which make up Orkney Cheese, is sold to the cheese factory in Kirkwall. Rolling average yields currently stand at 8000litres at 4.1%BF and 3.35%P, on a twice daily milking regime.

“Without the farmer owned Orkney Cheese factory, there wouldn’t be a dairy sector on the islands” explains Steven. “One farm would be able to provide enough liquid milk for everyone on the island."

The milk price is set by the co-op board which has four farmer representatives on it. Steven describes the price as stable which gives the ability to have a bit of planning in the business. It is usually set for a few months before being altered based on costs and profit from the cheese.

Cows are typically turned over after three or four lactations but some of the best milkers are seven lactations and older. Steven has also found Montbéliarde crosses are able to last longer being that bit hardier than the black and white.

Four years ago, the Reids replaced their 40-year-old 20/20 herringbone parlour and visited different farms in Scotland to discover what would best suit his farming system.

“I looked at a rotary parlour and quickly realised that came at a price we would struggle to justify for our size. I took a serious look at robots but I like getting the cows out to grass in the summer and maintenance for them would have to come from the mainland.”

In the end Steven put in a DeLeval Fullwood 32 point Rapid Exit parlour with stalling for 40 in case we ever increased cow numbers in the future. This increased throughputs from 60 cows per hour to 120.

“I think the Rapid Exit parlour we put in was the right parlour for our system. It's clean and has a shorter pit – I'm very pleased with it."

The parlour was constructed in a new purpose built 165x70ft shed on a green field site and includes an automatic footbath as well as an auto sort gate and a cow alert detection system and ADF cluster flush and dip system – Steven’s favourite feature.

“You can work away milking and just plug into the system the night before or on the day which cows you want to keep back, and they will be waiting for you once you are finished. If you want a batch for vet treatment, notice feet needing attention or a cow needs AI'ing, one person can do it whereas before you needed a second person to work a gate as the cows left the parlour in single file."

The remaining sheds are a combination of straw-bedded courts, calf pens and cubicles. Milking cows are housed in a cubicle shed with mattresses, build in 2011 under a previous round of SRDP grants. Lighting is still high pressure sodium on a timer for 16 hours per day while the new parlour boasts modern LED lights, which Steven is keen to switch all sheds over to, to help improve fertility in the darker Orcadian winters. Young stock are kept in straw bedded courts with calves housed in the old parlour herd.

Calves are housed in pens of two for the first week with all male calves sold at roughly two weeks of age to a farm in Aberdeenshire, while heifers are reared in batches of eight. Steven said: “We used to use a computerised calf feeder but moved to using a milk taxi and individual feeding programme but found running them in batches was simpler and reduced the amount of pneumonia in them. Heifer calves are weaned at eight to 10 weeks and then put into courts of 30-50.”

At this stage, young stock are introduced to starter pellets, an 18% protein nut and ad-lib straw and after six months are either moved to grass parks, or, if they are born after March are kept housed and moved onto a growing ration.

Father, Bertie, does most of the feeding with a Keenan mixer wagon. The growing ration comprises a total mixed ration (TMR) of 0.5kg of straw, 0.5kg of barley, 3kg of draff and 0.2kg of soya. At 12-14 months, heifers should weigh in at 350kg-400kg and are either retained as replacements or sold through Aberdeen and Northern Mart at Thainstone, where cattle with Montbéliarde genetics tend to command a better price than those with Holstein mothers.

Retained heifers are then put onto a diet to 1kg of straw, 5kg of draff and ad-lib silage.

Milking cows are fed one ration in the winter months, comprising 40kg of silage, 5kg of draff, 2kg of soya, 4kg of barley and 1.5kg of sugar beet feed. Draff is from the two local distilleries Scapa and Highland Park which arrives costing around £25£30/t, with sugar beet at £230/t and soya at £450/t. Typically Orcadian farmers expect to pay between £50-£70/t more for inputs compared to farmers on the mainland due to ferry and road costs. This puts Steven’s ration at around £3/cow per day.

Steven has tried using blends, but prefers buying straights and mixing his own rations.

“When you go down the blends route you still need soya for the young cows and a ration for our stores too, so I find buying beet pulp and soya covers our needs on the farm. We did try dairy cake in the past too but using a TMR seems to fit our system and cows.”

Dry cows are fed a silage and straw mix with a 0.75kg of soya and 1kg of barley added in the last couple of weeks before calving.

Cows are usually turned out during the day depending on the weather, from mid April, and out at grass full time from mid May onwards until being housed again in October.

Grazing ground is broken up into typical Orkney 15-25acre parks which are often strip grazed during peak grass production in May and June. With the price of fertiliser rocketing, Steven is looking to get more out of his grass and will be taking more care in measuring growth this summer.

Some 300-350acres of first cut silage is usually harvested at the end of May/beginning of June, followed by a second 250acre cut six weeks later, before a final cut of 150 acres is harvested, weather permitting, in September. All silage is harvested by the family and with their own machinery, with the business also doing some contract silaging.

Another key part of the winter fodder comes from the 200 acres of barley grown for feed and bedding. Grass parks are ploughed up and barley grown for three or four years before returning to grass.

Sowing usually occurs in April with propino and Laureate spring barley varieties which produce yields of around 2.5t/acre but cereal farming on Orkney is always a bit of a gamble.

There are some 14 dairy farmers on Orkney who are keen to continually improve their businesses and have been bench marking against the rest of the UK. They recently undertook carbon audits through SRUC’s agri-calc and found their farms were below the UK average for carbon usage. The farms also monitored antibiotic usage through Kite Consulting and found they were again below the industry average.

At Howe Farm they work hard to keep the bactoscan in the low teens which has been fairly constant now for a number of years. Farmers which have a reading above 30 lose 0.5ppl from the creamery and above 50 lose 1.5ppl.

Cell counts average 160,000/ml per year bolstered by the ADF milking invent system which automatically dips and flushes each cluster.

Last year, Steven also took advantage of the capital grant scheme to buy a teat scrubber brush which has cut down on paper usage and ensures more consistent bactoscans.

Cows feet are trimmed routinely after drying off and at 100 days into lactation. Despite the Montbéliarde’s reputation for being more robust Steven finds little difference between the two breeds.

Looking to the future Steven remains optimistic but uncertain.“The pandemic has had a fair impact on us and slowed cheese sales but they have picked up again recently."