51AVÊÓƵ

Speaking at the British Cattle Breeders conference, Mr Christie explained he had decided to get involved in the Fast Breeders Project after realising the problem within his own herd, was the ‘long-tail' of cows that were not producing enough milk.

"We wanted to solve that problem, and we wanted to increase income by £1million per 1,000 cows per year without more cows or more feed.

"In 10 years we want to go from 475kg milk solids per cow and less than 1kg milk solids per kg liveweight, to 750kg milk solids per cow, and 1.5kg milk solids per kg liveweight.

Sustainable

"This is an audacious aim, but we want to help ourselves become financially sustainable."

In order to create the Fast Breeders Index, the farms involved DNA tested their entire herds to create a SNP key. And now, nearly 9,000 animals have been genotyped.

For more from the British Cattle Breeders Conference click here.

Mr Christie also explained they had created a ‘cows own worth' tool, which identifies the least profitable cows to cull.

While, Mr Christie said the process was take longer than he had originally expected he is seeing an improvement in milk volumes, fat and protein.

Results

However, he also said that he questioned whether this was also because management had also improved.

He said: "When doing a project like this, it really does bring everything into focus."

Read also: Survey demonstrates farmers' commitment to improving biodiversity

And he added he was also concerned that cow was also increasing, which he said was a worrying trend because it takes a long time to make genetic change.

Cow size

"We are worried we set in motion a change of cow size that neither works for the environment or the profit and takes us a long time to unpick.

A liveweight of 500-535kg remains the ideal, but I think we will exceed this and have to cross to Jerseys again.