dairy
New rotary parlour for Dourie Farm Rory Christie farms in partnership with his brother Gregor near Port William on the south west coast of Scotland. The farm has been in the family since 1954 when the brother’s grandfather set up a limited company to create The Dourie Farming Company Ltd. The farm focuses on a grassland system similar, in part, to a New Zealand model. However, Rory was keen to demonstrate how he has taken the pastoral grazing system and developed it further. In the late 1990s the company made the decision to close the four dairies that made up the company and build a new dairy unit. This decision was made to increase the herd size
from 600 to 1500 and improve farm efficiency. “We had already moved to Kiwi genetics and were focused on a pastoral grazing system similar to that of New Zealand,” says Rory. “Gregor and I knew we had to rationalise and reinvest. We wanted to focus that investment on livestock and believed that pastoral dairy farming was the best way to make use of our land rather than invest in an intensive indoor system,” he adds. The milk produced at The Dourie is bought by the Caledonian Cheese Company. “They pay for high protein milk which pastoral dairy farming lends itself to,” says Rory. The
uplift in herd size was based on economics and survival. Rory was aware that milk prices were not increasing fast enough for the herd to stay at 600. He grew the herd and in 2015 purchased 300 jerseys from Denmark to reach the targeted 1500. “We made a lean assessment of the business to cope with the drop in milk prices at this time. We cut costs wherever we could and moved to once a day milking. This helped us reduce walking distance, waiting time and stress for both the cows and our staff,” he says. This model continued for four years. However, it was clear that economic pressures required the herd to provide more milk.
In 2019 Rory invested in a second parlour to move to two milkings a day. “Having a good reputation with the Bank of Scotland for debt repayment we were given the money to build a 60-point E100 DeLaval parlour. We invested in a piped slurry system, more slurry storage and housing for staff. This will hopefully help us hit our production targets of 5500 litres per 500 kilo cow, feeding 500 kilos of concentrate per year,” he explains. The parlour is one of two DeLaval units, the first being a 44-point rotary that was installed in 2005. “Before we added the second parlour it was taking us ten hours to milk the
Rory Christie has installed a DeLaval E100 rotary parlour to increase milkings and yield from 3500 litres to 5500 litres per cow
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