Farm Of The Week: On a roll with the Brown Swiss cattle

When his parents ran the farm, there were 20 farmers in dairy in Upper Nidderdale, north of Pateley Bridge. Even when he took over, 15 years ago, there were eight. Now he is the last.

Longside Farm is a tenancy of 160 acres above Gouthwaite Reservoir, where the dale gets narrow and steep. David has been there since he was two and milking cows since he was 12. It used to be a mixed dairy and sheep holding but his brother, Martyn, took the sheep when he got his own place. David rents another 20 acres at Northallerton in the summer, to graze young heifers.

Over the years, what was a European-style Friesian herd had moved, like most, towards the North American model of Holstein-Friesian.

The black-and-whites delivered a range of the reasons they can be problematic. They found the steeper pastures a trial. They went lame a lot and sick a lot, their fertility was a gamble and productivity was not that hot. And at the time, the dairies paid extra for high butterfat, which is hard to get out of Holsteins.

Also, David occasionally hankered for a bit of colour. Twelve years ago, he took a fancy to a red-and-white Holstein bull but was outbid. Searching for something else, he found a Brown Swiss from a good dam line going cheap. And from the moment the first of its calves were born, he was converted.

The last of the black-and-whites went this spring and more than half the herd is now 75-90 per cent Swiss, running alongside a few pure-breds and a couple of dozen first crosses – ranging between them from cream to black in colour.

Along the way, he did try a few alternatives. Normandys struck him as probably good sucklers but not quite right for dairy. Ayrshires were “a bit flighty”. Guernseys didn’t last. Shorthorns were “very very good” and definitely an option – except he had already chosen his.

Worldwide, the Brown Swiss is probably the second most popular dairy breed. It has been gaining ground in the dairy counties of England lately, notably in Cheshire, and there has been a Brown Swiss Association in the USA since 1880. As with the black-and-whites, there are distinctly American and distinctly European strains and as with the black and whites, David aims for something in the middle.

Holsteins are notorious for irregular patterns leading to all-round calving, which suits the dairies. But David has had enough of all that. He has got this lot synchronised to deliver over August and September.

“These hillsides easily go brown in spring and we decided if we were going to feed them it might as well be in the winter, when they were inside anyway,” he says. Current winter ration is about 3k of Spey syrup, 2k straw, 10k mash grain, 4k of blend and 45k of silage, put through a Keenan mixer. Summer is grass and fresh air. With that light level of additions to grass, he thinks he is doing well to average 7,500 litres a lactation. The black-and-whites would probably have delivered a touch less on the same ration. And he could certainly get more from the Swiss if it was worth the push. The dam to his current bull averaged 14,000 litres and 4.75 per cent butterfat.

“But it’s not all about productivity,” says David. “My life is just a lot easier. These never get milk fever. We don’t have to worry about dry cow diets. They never have twisted stomach. If they get a touch of mastitis, they are good at sorting it out themselves. I’m still on the box of penicillin I bought last September and I’ve nearly forgotten what my vet looks like.”

He is on his fourth Brown Swiss bull. A bull is definitely cheaper than AI and not half the trouble some farmers reckon, he says. However, he is contemplating an investment in sexed semen, because he can get such good prices for spare heifers. Spare bull calves are a bit problematic, because people are not used to them around here, but they grow at least as well as the black and whites, he says.

Easy insemination, whichever way, is one of the virtues of the breed and although he is only milking about 80, he has about 160 in the herd just now, including heifers coming up and new calves.

Good prices for cull cows, over the past year, have helped to keep him “ticking over”. But he needs a good bit more than the 26p a litre he is getting.

He supplies Arla and is awaiting its response to the recent flurry of price increases by rival buyers. David says it should pay at least 33p. Chances are it will be more like 28p. But other people’s new contracts have reintroduced some incentive for high butterfat and it will help him if Arla follows suit. The Brown Swiss will give him four per cent off grass alone. When he started turning to them, that would have meant their milk was worth up to 2p a litre more than standard. The era of low-fat everything reduced the premiums to a fraction of that. But now, cream is in demand again.

Matthew Johnson, a market analyst for DairyCo, the support organisation funded by levies on farmers, says the reasons are various – globalisation, the rise of China, the decline of New Zealand butter...

“But certainly we are currently seeing butter at £200 a tonne higher than a year ago, and in February-March it was £1,000 more. As a result, cream is £150 a tonne higher than a year ago and when butter was up £1,000, cream was up £500. However, it is all very volatile.”

David has a son, Steven, doing a degree in agricultural engineering; a married daughter, Christine, in Pool in Wharfedale; and another daughter, Christine, living in Linton on Ouse with a fiance who will cover the milking occasionally. But none of them wants to come home and start doing it twice a day forever.

“At 40p a litre, they might think differently,” David comments. He thinks farmers need to get a bit more militant and has turned out for Farmers For Action. He used to be chairman of his local NFU but gave up on the union because of its reluctance to get tough.

As a tenant farmer, at 55, he has an eye on the need to provide for retirement, let alone invest in the business, and he is scrimping on both.

One thing he always finds the money for is pasture renewal and he has been impressed by his latest supplier of seed mixes, Hurrells of Driffield.

Meanwhile, thanks partly to the Brown Swiss virtues, he is “ticking over”. High prices for cull cattle have been a help lately. His wife, Pauline, works part-time as a receptionist in the leisure centre at Pateley Bridge and runs a little hobby herd of Dexters, which sell as beef through Furniss’s butcher shop at Ben Rhydding and through the restaurant of the Yorke Arms at Ramsgill.

Her email address is [email protected]. David’s phone number is 07889 166721.