Farmer Focus: Messrs Armstrong, Cumbria
The family moved to Plaskettlands on the beautiful Solway Coast in the shadow of the Lake District in 1942 and started registering Ayrshires with the earliest record the family can find being in 1948.
The 3rd generation family farm is now run by grandson Rodney Armstrong and his wife Annabell in partnership with Rodney’s parents and brother, and their son Michael who leads the day-to-day management of the herd, along with the help of their two daughters Amy and Laura and the extended family when needed.
The herd of 100 pedigree Ayrshires are milked twice a day and currently averages 5,891 litres, 4.12% Butterfat and 3.31% Protein with a calving interval of 378. Calving all year round, the herd graze out in summer, being buffer fed in the evenings, and are cubicle housed the rest of the year on mattresses with sawdust. Breeding all their own replacements, 50% of the herd is served to Belgian Blue that are sold as weaned calves. The young stock and bull beef are reared at Rodney’s brother’s farm.
They have always run a couple of bulls, and AI the rest with conventional semen used on most, and sexed semen only being used on the odd cow family to ensure a heifer out of them. A handful of Ayrshire bulls are reared and sold each year as they still find a market for them with less and less being available on the market.
In 2017 the family invested in a new parlour, a 10/20 Herringbone parlour, which is when their numbers rose to 100 in the herd. There is no intention to increase any further, as they want to work within their means and not rely on external labour that is hard to find.
Michael decided to move to CIS in 2022, using the milk recording, health testing and pedigree package services. They do their own sample collections on a factored basis, meaning they record in a morning one month and an evening the following month. Michael uses the cell count report available on YourHerd, the free herd management programme from CIS, to detect any cell count problems and treat them accordingly as early as possible along with using it for selective dry cow therapy.
Michael also finds one of the main benefits of using CIS is having the medicine book on the MobileHerd App on his phone, which is free to all CIS customers. He says “Having the medicine book on my phone means I always have it with me, I can enter any problems, and the medicine administered as I do it therefore saving on time writing up the medicine book when I get in the office. It also saves a lot of time and duplication, as I can just download everything off YourHerd when it comes to doing dairy costings etc for our milk buyer, First Milk.”
“Being a pedigree Ayrshire herd the most cost-effective service for us to sign up for is the Ayrshire Complete package that CIS offers, meaning that for one set monthly fee the milk recording, all pedigree heifer registrations and two type classification visits are covered. All calvings can be inputted on the MobileHerd App, which will automatically register the birth with BCMS for the passport and register the calf with the Ayrshire Society, again saving us time and duplication of work,” adds Michael.
The Plaskett herd currently has 11 Excellent and 29 VG classified cows in the herd. The Armstrong’s enjoy classifying, as it’s a good reassurance that they are breeding their cows in the right direction with a fresh set of eyes coming to look at each individual cow. They use the breakdown of scores when next breeding the cow and find it also a useful marketing tool when selling surplus heifers or their bulls.
Looking to the future, the aim is to improve some of the farm buildings to increase cow comfort further and become more efficient, and enhance slurry storage. They hope that a true family farm like theirs still has a place within the industry in years to come.
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