NEWS

Ballymoney family honoured as dairy farmers of the year
EXCLUSIVE
By Chris McCullough

A FAMILY farming partnership from Ballymoney has won this year's prestigious title of Promar Dairy Farmer of the Year.
Winning the title for 2009 is Andrew Chestnutt from Ballymoney, who farms together with his father, Samuel, and uncle, Wallace. 
The annual award is dedicated to a member of United Dairy Farmers whose farm management results, as recorded by Promar, have shown the most improvement in the last 12 months.
High quality milk production is of the utmost importance to the Chestnutt family who support a 115 cow herd of Holsteins on their Newbridge Road farm. The boys manage a calving pattern heavily weighted towards autumn calving, with 85 cows calving between September and November. 
New cattle accommodation to house the growing herd and comfortably exceed all welfare standards is currently under construction. "This will allow us to comfortably house all cows under the one roof with calving pens within easy reach of the parlour and 300 feet of feeding space," said Andrew. 
With improved slurry handling facilities and modern comfortable cow housing the Chestnutt’s are well positioned to meet the challenges of producing milk in an increasingly volatile world market.
Each year Andrew aims to make two cuts of high quality silage. This years first cut silage is analysing 43 per cent DM and ME of 10.9 and 11.6 per cent Protein. 
Wholecrop wheat is also grown on the farm, injecting a high fibre variation to the diet and acts as an aid to maintaining cow condition, which in turn is central to good fertility.
Even in a difficult year of milking conditions, milk yields on the farm rose by over 250 litres per cow on last year with the average overall yield now at 8,066 litres. 
This respectable yield has been achieved by utilising an impressive 4,166 litres from forage - an increase of nearly 700 litres per cow on the previous year.
Milk solids have also improved significantly this year with Butterfat levels up 0.18 per cent to 4.09 per cent and Protein averaging 3.24 per cent. 


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December 11th 2009
November 27th 2009